For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets,
and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy.
Erin shared the backseat of the red Fiat with Jordan. Christian sat up front with the driver. The Sanguinist had his head out the open window, speaking to a Swiss guard in a midnight-blue uniform and cap. The young man carried an assault rifle over one shoulder, guarding St. Anne’s Gate, one of the side entrances into Vatican City.
Normally the guards here weren’t overtly armed.
So why the heightened security?
The guard nodded, stepped back, and waved their car through.
Christian whispered to the driver, and they set off into the Holy City, passing under the verdigris-green iron archway. Once they were moving again, Christian had returned his phone to his ear, where it had been glued ever since their chartered plane had landed at Rome’s smaller Ciampino Airport. Their driver had been waiting for them in this nondescript Fiat and whisked them in minutes to the gates of Vatican City.
Jordan held Erin’s hand in the backseat, staring out as the car slipped past the Vatican bank and post office and circled behind the bulk of St. Peter’s Basilica.
She studied the ancient buildings, imagining the secrets hidden behind their bright stucco facades. As an archaeologist, she uncovered truth layer by layer, but her discovery of the existence of strigoi and Sanguinists had taught her that history had layers even deeper than any she had thought existed.
But one question remained foremost in her mind.
Jordan expressed it. “Where is Christian taking us?”
She was just as curious. She had thought they would be heading straight to the papal apartments to meet with Cardinal Bernard in his offices, but instead their car headed farther out into the grounds behind the basilica.
Erin leaned forward, interrupting Christian on the phone. She was too tired to be polite and irritated by all the subterfuge they’d followed to come here.
“Where are we going?” she asked, touching the Sanguinist’s shoulder.
“We’re almost there.”
“Almost where?” she pressed.
Christian pointed his phone ahead.
Erin ducked lower to study their approach toward a building of white Italian marble with a red-tiled roof. A set of train tracks behind it revealed the structure’s purpose.
It was Stazione Vaticano, the one-and-only train station on the Vatican railway line. It had been built during the reign of Pope Pius XI in the early 1930s. Today it was mostly used to import freight, though the last few popes had taken occasional ceremonial trips from here aboard a special papal train.
Erin saw that same train parked on those tracks now.
Three forest-green cars were lined up behind a black old-fashioned engine that puffed out steam. At another time, she would have been thrilled at the sight, but right now she had but one overriding concern: the fate of Rhun. During the trip here, no other visions had come, and she feared what that meant for Rhun.
The Fiat drove straight to the platform and stopped. Christian popped out his door, drawing Jordan and Erin with him. With his phone back at his ear, Christian led them up the platform. The Sanguinist had changed out of his tattered dress uniform and into a priest’s shirt and black jeans. The outfit suited him better.
Upon reaching the train, he lowered his phone and pointed to the middle car with a mischievous grin. “All aboard!”
Erin glanced back toward the dome of the basilica. “I don’t understand. Are we leaving already? What about Rhun?”
The slender Sanguinist shrugged. “At this point, I know as much as you do. The cardinal asked that I bring you both here and board the train. It’s scheduled to be under way as soon as we are on board.”
Jordan put his warm palm against her lower back. She leaned back into it, glad for the touch of the familiar, the understandable. “What else did you expect from Bernard?” he said. “If you look up need to know in the dictionary, you’d find his smiling face there. The guy likes his secrets.”
And secrets got people killed.
Erin fingered the small marble of amber in the pocket of her jeans, picturing Amy’s hesitant smile under a desert sun.
“For now,” Jordan said, “we might as well do what the cardinal asks. We can always come back if we don’t like what he tells us.”
She nodded. Jordan could always be counted on to point to the most practical way forward. She kissed his cheek, his stubble rough under her lips, adding another soft kiss to his lips.
Christian stepped to the door and pulled it open. “To avoid undue attention, the Vatican put out a cover story that the train is being shifted to a maintenance yard outside Rome. But the sooner we’re moving, the happier I’ll be.”
With little other choice, Erin climbed the metal steps, followed by Jordan. She stepped into a sumptuous dining car. Golden velvet curtains had been tied back next to each window, and the compartment practically glowed in the morning sunshine — from the buttery yellow ceiling to the rich oak joinery. The air smelled of lemon polish and old wood.
Jordan whistled. “Looks like the pope knows how to travel. The only thing that would make this picture better would be a steaming pot of coffee on one of those tables.”
“I second that,” Erin said.
“Have a seat,” Christian said, passing by them and waving to a table that had been set. “I’ll see about making your wishes come true.”
As he headed toward the car in front, Erin found a spot bathed in sunlight and sat, enjoying the warmth after the rush across the cold city. She stroked the white linen tablecloth with one finger. Two places were set with silver flatware and fine china decorated with the papal seal.
Jordan smoothed his dress blue uniform, doing his best to look presentable as he sat next to her. Still, she caught the hard glint to his eyes as he peered out the windows, constantly on the watch for any danger, though trying not to show it.
Finally, he settled down. “Hope the food here is better than at that hippie place Christian took us to in San Fran. Vegan food? Really? I’m a meat-and-potatoes sort of guy. And in my particular case, I lean more toward the meat side of that equation.”
“This is Italy. Something tells me you might get lucky with the food.”
“Indeed you shall!” a new voice called behind them, coming from the door to the first car.
Startled, Jordan came close to bursting out of his seat and swinging around, but even he recognized the slight German accent to those few words.
“Brother Leopold!” Erin exclaimed, delighted to see the monk, along with the tray he carried, holding a coffee service.
She hadn’t seen the German monk since the day he had saved her life. He looked the same — with his wire-rimmed spectacles, simple brown habit, and boyish grin.
“Never fear, breakfast will be served in a moment.” Leopold lifted the tray. “But first, Christian mentioned that you were both desperately in need of a jolt of caffeine after your long journey.”
“If you define jolt as a full pot of coffee, you are correct.” Jordan smiled. “It’s good to see you again, Leopold.”
“Likewise.”
The monk bustled over and filled their china cups with a steaming dark roast blend. The train had begun to slowly move, the timbre of the engines stoking higher.
Christian appeared again and took the seat opposite Erin, staring pointedly at the steaming cup in her hands.
Familiar with his routine, she handed him the white china cup. He brought it to his nose, closed his eyes, and sniffed deeply at the curl of steam. An expression of contentment crossed his face.
“Thank you,” he said and handed the cup back to her.
As a young Sanguinist, he wasn’t as far removed from simple human pleasures, like coffee. She liked that.
“Any news?” Jordan asked him. “Like where we’re going?”
“I was told that once we’re outside of Rome, we’ll learn more. Meantime, I say we savor the calm.”
“As in, before the storm?” Erin asked.
Christian chuckled. “Most probably.”
Jordan seemed content enough with that answer. During the trip here, he and Christian had become fast friends, unusually so considering Jordan’s distaste and distrust for the Sanguinists after Rhun had bitten her.
As the line of cars inched away from the station, the train headed toward a set of steel doors that blocked the tracks a few hundred yards ahead, set into the massive walls that surrounded the Holy City. The gateway sported rivets and thick doornails and looked as if it were meant to guard a medieval castle.
A train whistle sounded, and the doors rumbled ponderously apart, sliding into the brick wall. This gate marked the border between Vatican City and Rome.
Passing beneath that archway under a head of steam, the train picked up speed and headed out into Rome. The train pulled through the city, like any ordinary train — only theirs had a mere three cars: the galley in front, the dining car in the middle, and a third compartment in back. The last car looked similar to the others from the outside, but its curtains had been drawn, and a solid metal door separated that car from hers.
As she looked at that door now, she tried to ignore the tightening dread in her stomach.
What was back there?
“Ah,” Brother Leopold exclaimed, drawing her attention. “As promised… breakfast.”
From the galley, a new figure emerged, as familiar as Leopold, if not as welcome.
Father Ambrose — aide to Cardinal Bernard — stepped from the galley car with a tray of omelets, brioche, butter, and jam. The priest’s round face looked even redder than usual, damp with sweat or perhaps from the steam of the galley kitchen. He didn’t look happy with his role as waiter.
“Good morning, Father Ambrose,” Erin said. “It’s wonderful to see you again.”
She did her best to make that sound genuine.
Ambrose didn’t even bother. “Dr. Granger, Sergeant Stone,” he said perfunctorily, inclining his head fractionally toward each of them.
The priest unloaded the food and returned to the galley car.
Clearly, he wasn’t interested in conversation.
She wondered if his presence indicated that Cardinal Bernard was already on board. She glanced again to that steel door leading to the neighboring compartment.
Next to her, Jordan simply tore into his omelet, as if he might not see food again for days — which, considering their past experiences with the Sanguinists, could be true.
Following his example, she spread jam onto a slice of brioche.
Christian watched all the while, looking envious.
By the time their plates were empty, the train had threaded out of Rome and appeared to be heading south of the city.
Jordan’s hand again found hers under the table. She stroked her fingertips along his palm, liking the smile it provoked. As much as the thought of a relationship scared her, for him she was ready to take the risk.
But a certain awkwardness remained between them. No matter how hard she tried not to, her thoughts often returned to the moment when Rhun had bitten her. No mortal man had ever made her feel like that. But the act had meant nothing, a mere necessity. She wondered if that bone-deep bliss was a trick of the strigoi to disable their victims, to turn them weak and helpless.
Her fingers inadvertently found themselves touching the scars on her neck.
She wanted to ask someone about it. But who? Certainly not Jordan. She considered asking Christian, to inquire what it had been like for him when he was first bitten. Back at the diner in San Francisco, he had seemed to sense her thoughts, but she had balked at discussing such an erotic experience with any man, especially a priest.
Still, not all her hesitation was embarrassment.
She knew a part of her didn’t want to know the truth.
What if the feeling of connectedness that she had experienced wasn’t just a mechanism to quiet prey? What if it was something else?
Rhun awoke to a feeling of dread and panic. His arms flailed up and to the side, expecting to feel stone walls enclosed around him.
His memories filled back in.
He was free.
As he listened to the clack of steel wheels on tracks, he remembered the battle at the edge of the Holy City. He had suffered some minor wounds, but worst of all, the battle had drained the last dregs of his strength, returning him to a weakened state. Cardinal Bernard had insisted he rest while they waited for the arrival of Erin and Jordan.
Even now he could hear the thump of human hearts, the timpani of their beats as familiar to his keen ears as any song. He ran his palms over his body. He wore a dry set of robes, the reek of old wine gone. He eased himself upright, testing each vertebra as he did so.
“Careful, my son,” Bernard said out of the darkness of the train car. “You are not yet restored to your full health.”
As Rhun’s eyes adjusted and focused, he recognized the papal sleeping car, outfitted with the double bed upon which he had slept. There was also a small desk and a pair of silk chairs flanking a couch.
He spotted a familiar figure standing behind Bernard at his bedside. She wore tailored leather armor and a silver chain belt. Her black hair had been braided back from the stern lines of her dark face.
“Nadia?” he croaked out.
When had she arrived?
“Welcome back to the living,” Nadia said with a sly smile. “Or as close to living as any Sanguinist can claim.”
Rhun touched his brow. “How long—?”
He was interrupted by the final figure in the room. She lounged on the couch, one leg stretched up, outfitted with a splint. He remembered her limping flight down the cobblestone street toward the Holy City.
“Helló, az én szeretett,” Elisabeta said, speaking Hungarian, every syllable as familiar as if he had heard them only yesterday, instead of hundreds of years before.
Hello, my beloved.
There was no warmth in her words, only disdain.
Elisabeta switched to Italian, though her dialect was old, too. “I trust you did not find your brief time in my prison too burdensome. But then again, you took my life, you destroyed my soul, and then you stole four hundred years from me.” Her silver eyes glared out of the darkness at him. “So I doubt you’ve been punished quite enough.”
Every word cut him with its truth. He had done all that to her, a woman he had once loved — still loved, if perhaps only the memory of her former self. He reached for his pectoral cross, found a new one hung around his neck, and prayed for forgiveness for those sins.
“Has Christ been much comfort to you these last hundreds of years?” she asked. “You look no happier than you did in my castle centuries ago.”
“It is my duty to serve Him, as always.”
One side of her mouth lifted in a half smile. “You give me the politic answer, Father Korza, yet did we not once promise to speak truth to each other? Do you not owe me at least so much?”
He owed her much more.
Nadia glared at Elisabeta with undisguised rage. “Do not forget that she left you in that coffin to suffer and die. Or all the women she killed on the streets of Rome.”
“It is her nature now,” he said.
And I made her so.
He had perverted her from healer to killer. All her crimes rested on his conscience — both in the past and now.
“We can control our natures,” Nadia countered, touching the delicate silver cross at her neck. “I control mine every day. So do you. She is fully capable of doing the same, but she chooses not to.”
“I will never change,” Elisabeta promised. “You should have just killed me at my castle.”
“So I was ordered,” he told her. “It was mercy that hid you away.”
“I trust little in your mercy.”
She shifted in her seat, lifting clasped hands to brush a lock of hair from her forehead before settling them again in her lap. He saw she wore handcuffs.
“Enough.” Bernard gestured to Nadia.
She stepped closer to the sofa and pulled Elisabeta none too gently to her feet. Nadia kept firm hold of her. She would not underestimate Elisabeta as he had when he took her from the wine.
The countess only smiled, baring her handcuffs toward Rhun.
“Shackled like an animal,” she said. “That is what your love has brought me.”
Leopold started at one end of the dining car and worked his way to the other. He did what he was ordered to do, closing each set of curtains, pulling the panels tightly together until no scrap of sunlight came through.
The car grew dark, the only illumination coming from the electric lights mounted on the ceiling. He paused outside the door to the last car.
The two humans’ hearts beat louder. He smelled the anxiety rising from them like steam. A twinge of pity flickered through him.
“What are you doing?” Erin asked, but she was no fool. From the way she glanced from the steel door to the closed windows, she must already sense that something dangerous was about to be brought in here.
“You are perfectly safe,” Leopold assured her.
“To hell with that,” Jordan swore.
The soldier reached across Erin to the curtain next to her and yanked it back open. Sunlight poured into the room, bathing her.
Leopold stared at Erin in the middle of the pool of sunlight, trying to decide whether to return and secure the curtain. But from Jordan’s expression, he decided against it. Instead, he rapped on the thick steel door, alerting those inside that all was ready.
Christian stood, as if readying for battle, and placed himself between Erin and the door, standing half in shadow, half in light.
The door opened, and Cardinal Bernard stepped first into the car, wearing his full scarlet vestments. His eyes moved from Erin to Jordan. “First, let me apologize for such clandestine measures, but after all that has occurred — both here and in California — I thought it wiser to be cautious.”
Neither of the two humans seemed overly satisfied by this explanation, plainly suspicious, but they politely remained silent.
That awkward tableau was interrupted as the galley door on the other side of the car opened, and Father Ambrose appeared. He wiped his hands on a dish towel and stepped inside, uninvited. He must have heard Bernard’s voice and come to offer assistance to the cardinal — and to eavesdrop on the discussion.
Bernard strode across the car. The cardinal took Erin’s hand in both of his own, then Jordan’s. “You both look well.”
“As do you.” Erin tried to smile, but Leopold could read the worry from her face. “Is there any news on Rhun’s whereabouts?”
Hope rang there. She genuinely cared for Rhun.
Leopold hardened his heart against the rising guilt inside him. He liked these two humans, cherished their vitality and intelligence, but he reminded himself for the thousandth time that his betrayal served a higher purpose. This knowledge did not make his traitorous acts any easier.
“I’ll explain all in good time,” Bernard promised them. His eyes turned to his assistant. “That will be all, Father Ambrose.”
With a peeved sigh, his assistant retreated back into the galley, but Leopold had no doubt that the spidery priest had an ear close to that door, hanging on their every word. He was not about to be left out in the dark.
Then again, neither am I.
He remembered his promise to the Damnatus, felt again the touch of the dire moth on his shoulder, the flutter of its wing against his neck.
I must not fail him.
Once Father Ambrose was gone, Cardinal Bernard signaled to the shadows beyond the open steel door.
Erin tensed, her fingers tightening on Jordan’s hand. She was suddenly very happy Jordan had yanked the curtains open. Still, despite the streaming sunlight, she felt chilled.
From out of the darkness a black-clad priest stepped into the bright car. He was skeletally thin, a gaunt pale hand held the edge of his hood against the glare. He moved in halting steps, but there remained a certain grace about him, a familiarity in his movements.
Then he dropped his hand and revealed his face. Lanky black hair hung over dark, sunken eyes. His skin was pulled tight across broad cheekbones, and his lips looked thin, bloodless.
She remembered kissing those lips when they had been fuller.
“Rhun…”
Shock pulled her to her feet. He looked as if he had aged years.
Jordan rose and kept to her side.
Rhun waved them all back to their seats. He then hobbled, assisted by Bernard, and fell heavily into the vacant chair next to Christian. Erin noted he kept out of the worst of the bright light. While Sanguinists could tolerate sunlight, it weakened them, and clearly Rhun had few reserves to spare.
From across the table, familiar eyes locked onto hers. She read exhaustion there, along with a measure of regret.
Rhun spoke softly. “I understand from Cardinal Bernard that we have come to share a blood bond. I apologize for any suffering that might have caused you.”
“It’s fine, Rhun,” she said. “I’m fine. But you…”
His pale lips lifted into a ghostly attempt at a smile. “I have felt more vigorous than I do now, but with Christ’s help, I will recover my full strength soon.”
Jordan took her hand atop the table, making his claim on her clear. He glared at Rhun, showing no sympathy. Instead, he turned to Bernard, who stood beside the table.
“Cardinal, if you knew Rhun was missing for so many weeks, why did you wait so long before reaching out to us? You could have called before he got into this sorry state.”
The cardinal folded his gloved fingers together. “Until a few hours ago, I did not know of the dark act committed against Dr. Granger in the tunnels below St. Peter’s. I could not know of any bond between him and Erin. But Rhun’s actions have offered hope for the world.”
Rhun dropped his gaze to the table, looking mortified.
What was the cardinal talking about?
Bernard lifted his arms to encompass the train. “With all who are gathered here — the prophesied trio — we can now seek the First Angel.”
Jordan glanced around the table. “In other words, the band’s back together again. The Knight of Christ, the Warrior of Man, and the Woman of Learning.”
At the mention of the last of that trio, he squeezed Erin’s fingers.
She slipped her hand free. “Not necessarily,” she reminded everyone.
She heard that pistol blast again in her head, pictured Bathory Darabont collapsing in that tunnel. I murdered the last of the Bathory line.
Rhun stared at her. “The three of us have accomplished much.”
In this, Jordan seemed to agree. “Damned straight.”
They might be right, but it was the damned part that worried her.
The train slowed and changed tracks, continuing its journey south.
Jordan glanced out the window, trying to guess their destination. Bernard had still not told them. Instead, the cardinal had vanished again into the rear car, leaving them to their own thoughts, to digest all that had happened.
It was a big meal.
A clink of metal drew his attention back to that dark doorway. Bernard emerged again, with two women in tow.
The first was tall, a dark-haired and dark-eyed Sanguinist. He immediately recognized Nadia. He eyeballed her leather armor and the length of silver belted at her waist. The latter was a chain whip, a weapon the woman was extremely skilled at wielding. She also had a long blade strapped to her side.
The phrase dressed to kill came to mind.
Nadia’s attention stayed focused on the second woman.
Not a good sign.
The stranger was shorter than Erin, with short curly ebony hair. She wore jeans and boots, the right one torn, exposing a splint on that leg, plainly a recent injury. Over her clothes, she shouldered an old-fashioned heavy cloak that seemed to weigh her down. Her tiny hands were folded demurely in front of her, and it took Jordan a second more to see that she wore handcuffs.
In one gloved hand, Nadia held a thick chain tethered to those handcuffs.
They weren’t taking any chances with this one.
Why was this woman so dangerous?
As the prisoner limped closer, Jordan saw her face. His jaw clenched to keep from gasping in surprise.
Silvery eyes met his. He studied the shape of those perfectly formed lips, the high cheekbones, the curly fall of her locks. If he changed the hue of her hair to a fiery red, she would be the spitting image of Bathory Darabont, the woman Erin had killed in the tunnel below Rome.
Erin had stiffened next to him, also recognizing the obvious family resemblance.
“You found another from the line of Bathory,” Erin said.
“Yes,” the cardinal said.
Jordan inwardly groaned. Like the last one hadn’t been trouble enough.
“And she is strigoi,” Erin added.
Jordan flinched in surprise, suddenly understanding the need for the heavy guard, the drawn shades. He should have recognized this fact himself.
The woman fixed Erin with a cold, dismissive stare, then turned to the cardinal. She spoke to him in Latin, but her accent sounded Slavic, very much like Rhun’s when he got angry.
Jordan looked at the prisoner with new eyes, appraising the threat level, calculating contingencies if this monster broke free from her handlers.
Once the woman had finished, Bernard said, “It’s better if you speak English. Matters will go much more smoothly.”
She shrugged, turned to Rhun, and spoke in English. “You already look much refreshed, my love.”
My love? What did that mean?
As a priest, Rhun wasn’t supposed to take lovers.
She sniffed curtly at Erin and Jordan, as if they had both crawled out of some gutter. “It seems such low company suits you well.”
Rhun gave no indication that he had heard her.
Cardinal Bernard stepped forward and made a formal introduction. “This is Countess Elizabeth Bathory de Ecsed, widow of the Count Ferenc Nádasdy Bathory de Nádasd et Fogarasföld.”
Erin gasped, drawing Jordan’s eye, but she simply kept staring at the woman.
In turn, the cardinal introduced both of them to the countess. Fortunately their titles were much shorter. “Allow me to present Dr. Erin Granger and Sergeant Jordan Stone.”
Erin found her voice again. “Are you claiming that this is the Elizabeth Bathory? From the late 1500s?”
The woman bowed her head, as if acknowledging this truth.
Emotions ran across Erin’s face — a mix of relief and disappointment. They both knew how convinced the Church was that the Woman of Learning would arise from the Bathory line.
“I don’t understand,” Jordan said. “Is this woman a Sanguinist?”
The countess answered, “I will have no part of that dreary order. I place my faith in passion, not penitence.”
Rhun stirred. Jordan remembered the priest’s story from when he was new to the Sanguinist fold. In a moment of forbidden passion, Rhun had killed Elizabeth Bathory and the only way to save her was to turn her, to change her into a strigoi. But where had this woman been for the last four hundred years? The Church had been convinced the Bathory line had died with Darabont.
Jordan could guess the answer: Rhun must have hidden her.
It seemed the priest had kept quiet about more than just biting Erin.
Bernard spoke. “I believe that those gathered here are our best weapons in the upcoming War of the Heavens, a battle prophesied by the Blood Gospel. Here stands the world’s only hope.”
Countess Bathory laughed, the noise both amused and bitter. “Ah, Cardinal, with your love for the dramatic, you should have been better served by becoming an actor on a wider stage than the pulpit.”
“Nevertheless, I believe it to be true.” He turned and confronted the woman’s disobliging manner. “Would you rather the world end, Countess Bathory?”
“Did not my world come to an end long ago?” She glanced to Rhun.
Nadia pulled out her blade from its sheath at her hip. “We could make it a permanent end. After the murders you committed, you should be executed on the spot.”
The countess laughed again, a musical tinkling sound that raised goose bumps on the back of Jordan’s neck. “If the cardinal truly wished me dead, I would be a pile of ashes in St. Peter’s Square. For all your stern words, you need me.”
“That’s enough.” Bernard raised his red-gloved hands. “The countess has a duty to perform. She will serve as the Woman of Learning — or I will thrust her out into the sunlight myself.”
Erin steeled herself against her wounded pride.
That was a clear vote of no confidence from the cardinal.
Was Bernard really so certain of Bathory and so uncertain of her?
She had one advocate in her corner. Jordan slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Screw that. Erin proved that she is the Woman of Learning.”
“Did she now?” Countess Bathory ran her pink tongue along her upper lip, revealing sharp white fangs. “Then it seems I am not needed after all.”
Erin kept her face blank. Over the centuries, Bathory women had been singled out for generations, trained to serve as the Woman of Learning. She had no such pedigree. Although she had been part of the trio that had recovered the Blood Gospel, it had been Bathory Darabont who actually succeeded in opening that ancient tome on the altar of St. Peter’s.
Not me.
Bernard pointed a hand at the countess. “What can explain her presence here except the fulfillment of prophecy? A woman believed to be dead, but resurrected by Rhun, the indisputable Knight of Christ.”
“How about poor judgment?” Christian said, coming to Erin’s corner. “And blind coincidence? Not every fall of a coin is prophecy.”
Jordan nodded firmly.
Rhun spoke, his voice hoarse. “It was sin that brought Elisabeta to this moment, not prophecy.”
“Or perhaps a lack of experience with sin,” the countess countered with a spiteful smile. “We could spend many idle hours speculating as to why I am here. None of that should obscure the fact that I am here. What do you wish of me, and what shall you pay for my cooperation?”
“Is it not payment enough to save the earthly realm?” Nadia asked.
“What do I owe this earthly realm of yours?” Bathory straightened her back. “Against my will, I was torn from it, ripped away by the teeth of one of your own. Since that time I have spent far longer locked away than free. From this moment on, I will do nothing that does not benefit me.”
“We don’t need her,” Jordan said. “We have Erin.”
Both Nadia and Christian nodded, and gratitude at their trust filled her.
“No,” Bernard said firmly, ending the discussion with his sternness. “We need this woman.”
Erin clenched her jaw. Again she was being cast aside.
The countess stared at Bernard. “Then explain this role of mine, Cardinal. And let us see if you can buy my help.”
As Bernard explained about the prophecy, about the looming War of the Heavens, Erin reached down and took Jordan’s warm hand. He tilted his head to look at her, and she lost herself for a moment in those clear blue eyes, the eyes of the Warrior of Man. He squeezed her hand, making a silent promise. Whatever happened, she and Jordan were in this together.
The cardinal finished his explanation.
“I see,” Bathory said. “And what manner of payment might I expect if I help you find this First Angel?”
Bernard bowed his head toward the countess. “There are many rewards to be had by serving the Lord, Countess Bathory.”
“My rewards for serving the Church have been scant thus far.” The countess shook her head. “The glory of service does not content me.”
In this one instance, Erin agreed with Bathory. The countess had certainly gotten a raw deal — turned into a strigoi, imprisoned first in her own castle, then in a coffin of wine for hundreds of years.
Everyone the woman knew was long dead. Everything she cared about was gone.
Except Rhun.
“My desires are of utmost simplicity.” The countess held up one imperious finger. “First, the Sanguinists must protect my person for the rest of my unnatural life. Both from other strigoi and meddling humans.”
She held up another finger. “Second, I must be allowed to hunt.”
She unfolded another finger. “Third, my castle shall be restored to me.”
“Elisabeta,” Rhun whispered. “You do your soul a disservice by—”
“I have no soul!” she declared loudly. “Do you not remember the day you destroyed it?”
Rhun let out a quiet sigh.
Erin hated to see him look so defeated. She hated Bathory for causing it.
“We can reach an accommodation,” the cardinal said. “If you choose to live in a Sanguinist enclave, you will be sheltered from all who wish to do you harm.”
“I shall not be locked away in some Sanguinist nunnery.” The countess’s voice rang with anger. “Not for Christ, not for any man.”
“We could give you a suite of apartments in Vatican City itself,” Bernard countered. “And Sanguinists to protect you when you leave the Holy City.”
“And spend eternity in the company of priests?” the countess scoffed. “Surely, you cannot imagine I would succumb to such a dreadful fate?”
A corner of Christian’s mouth twitched toward a smile, but Nadia looked ready to explode.
“The Church has other properties.” Cardinal Bernard seemed unperturbed. “Though none so well defended.”
“And what of my hunting?”
Everyone fell silent. The train rattled against the tracks, carrying everyone south.
Bernard shook his head. “You may not take a human life. If you do, we shall be forced to take you down like any other animal.”
“How then will I survive?”
“We have access to human blood,” Bernard said. “We could supply you with enough to satisfy your needs.”
The countess examined her cuffed hands. “So am I to become a cosseted prisoner, as was my fate in centuries past?”
Erin wondered how long she had spent locked in her own castle before Rhun imprisoned her in a coffin and spirited her to Rome. Certainly long enough to know what it meant to lose your freedom.
The cardinal leaned back. “So long as you do not kill, you may roam the world, live your life as you see fit.”
“Tied to the Church for protection.” She shook the chains that bound her. “Ever dependent upon you for the very blood that sustains my meager existence.”
“Do you have a better deal?” Nadia scoffed. “Cardinal Bernard is offering you a life of ease, when you have earned only death.”
“Yet could not the same be said for each Sanguinist in this room?” Her silver eyes locked on Nadia. “Or have none of you tasted sin?”
“We have turned from our sins,” Nadia said. “As must you.”
“Must I?”
“If you do not agree,” the cardinal said, his tone brooking no argument, “we will throw you from the train into the sunlight and assume that is God’s will.”
The countess’s eyes locked onto Bernard’s face for a full minute.
No one in the car spoke or moved.
“Very well,” the countess said. “I accept your gracious terms.”
“If she gets to name terms,” Jordan spoke up, “then so do I.”
Everyone stared at him, their faces incredulous.
Jordan pulled Erin closer to him. “We’re in this together.”
Bernard looked ready to balk.
Christian faced the cardinal. “Even if Erin is not the Woman of Learning, she still has much knowledge. We might need her. I’m certainly not part of any prophecy, but that doesn’t mean I can’t serve.”
Erin realized he was right. It didn’t matter whether or not she was the prophesied Woman of Learning. What mattered was that if she could help, she would do it. This quest wasn’t about pride, it was about saving the world.
She stared down Bernard. “I want in.”
Jordan tightened his grip on her shoulder and looked at the cardinal. “You heard her. That’s nonnegotiable. Or I walk. And I have no aversion to sunlight.”
Nadia inclined her head in Erin’s direction. “I support this, too. Dr. Granger has proven herself loyal in battle and deed. While this one”—she yanked on the countess’s silver chain—“has proven the opposite.”
A wrinkle appeared in the cardinal’s forehead. “But the fulfillment of prophecy is clear about—”
Rhun raised his head, facing Bernard. “Who are you to pretend to know the will of God?”
Erin blinked, surprised by his support, from the priest who had resurrected Elizabeth Bathory to replace her.
The cardinal lifted his hands, palms out in a conciliatory gesture. “Very well. I concede. It would be foolish of me to dismiss Dr. Granger’s knowledge and keen mind. I’m sure she could assist Countess Bathory in her role as the Woman of Learning.”
Erin couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or terrified.
So, leaning against Jordan, she settled for both.
The train rocked as it continued south to points unknown.
As trees and hills rolled past the window, Jordan rested his chin on top of Erin’s head. She smelled like lavender and coffee. Her shoulder and side pressed against his. He wished the chairs weren’t bolted to the floor so he could pull her even closer.
Time alone with her would be great, without priests and prophecies. But that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.
Ideally, he would prefer that Erin stayed as far as possible from this mess, from Sanguinist priests and strigoi countesses. But that wasn’t going to happen either. He had spoken up for her because he knew how much she wanted to go. Additionally, if the Vatican sent her home, he wouldn’t be able to protect her.
But can I protect her here?
After Karen had been killed in action, time had stopped for him, and it hadn’t started again until he met Erin. He would always know that Karen had died alone hundreds of miles away from him. He would never let that happen again to someone he loved.
Someone he loved…
He had never spoken that word aloud, but it was there inside him.
He kissed the top of Erin’s head, intending to stay close to her no matter what.
Erin hugged him tighter, but he saw her eyes studying Rhun. The priest sat with his head bowed in prayer, his thin hands clasped in front of him. Jordan didn’t like how Erin had been acting around Rhun ever since he bit her. Her eyes seldom left him when he was near. Her fingers often touched the two puncture scars on her neck — not with dread but with something akin to wistfulness. Something had happened in that tunnel, something she also hadn’t spoken aloud about yet. Jordan didn’t know what it was, but he sensed she was keeping more secrets from him than just those damned bloody visions.
But there was nothing he could do to draw her out. Whatever she was working through was clearly private, and he would give her that latitude. For now the best plan was simply to get this mission done — then get Erin as far from Rhun as possible.
To that end…
Jordan stirred, keeping one arm tightly around Erin. “Anybody have any idea where we can find the First Angel? Or even begin looking?”
Erin sat straighter. “It depends on who the First Angel is.”
Seated at a neighboring table, the countess lifted her hands, rattling her handcuffs. “Does not the Bible teach us that the First Angel is the Morning Star, the first light of day, the son of the dawn?”
“You’re talking about Lucifer,” Erin said. “He went by those names, and he was indeed the first angel to fall. But the Bible mentions many other angels before him. The first angel mentioned in Genesis came to the slave Hagar and told her to go back to her mistress and bear her master’s child.”
“True.” The countess had the coldest smile that Jordan had ever seen. “Yet how could we hope to find an angel without a name?”
“That’s a good point,” Erin said.
Bathory inclined her head, accepting the compliment.
Jordan noted both Rhun and Bernard studying this exchange between the two women. Christian also caught Jordan’s eye, as if to say, See, I told you they would work well together.
In the shadows, Bathory closed her silver eyes, as if in thought. Long black lashes rested against her ashen cheeks.
Erin stared out the window toward the sunlight, as the train rattled past winter fields dotted with giant round bales of hay.
The countess opened her eyes again. “Perhaps we had best focus our search on angels that have names. The first angel mentioned by name in the Bible is Gabriel, the primary messenger of God. Could that be the First Angel that we seek?”
The priests at the table looked uncertain. Erin remained curiously quiet, gazing out the window.
“Gabriel the messenger?” Nadia raised an eyebrow, still standing behind Bathory holding the countess’s leash. “In a war, I would think the archangel Michael would be a better ally.”
Jordan surveyed the train car, suddenly recognizing the strangeness of this discussion. Even if they settled on a biblical angel, how were they going to find one and bring it the book?
“Don’t angels live in another dimension or something?” Jordan asked. “One that humans can’t get to? How are we supposed to reach an angel there?”
“Angels dwell in Heaven.” Rhun had returned his attention to his folded hands. “Yet they may travel freely to Earth.”
“Then I don’t suppose you guys have some sort of angelic phone?” Jordan asked, only half joking. After all he had experienced since learning of strigoi and Sanguinists, who knew what other secrets the Church was keeping?
“It is called prayer,” Cardinal Bernard said, frowning at his flippancy. “And I have spent many hours on my knees praying for the First Angel to reveal himself. But I do not think that this angel will do so. Not to me. He will reveal himself only to the trio of prophecy.”
“If you are right, my dear cardinal,” Bathory said, “then we should begin praying to Lucifer immediately. For surely only a fallen angel would reveal himself to the likes of your flawed trio.”
Erin finally spoke, still staring out the window with that faraway look that meant she was in deep thought. “I don’t think we’re looking for Gabriel or Michael or Lucifer. I think we are searching for the First Angel from Revelation.”
The countess laughed, almost clapping her hands. “The angel who sounds the trumpet and ends the world. Ah, what an enticing theory!”
Erin quoted from memory. “The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.”
Armageddon.
Those were the stakes.
Jordan tried to picture hail and fire mixed with blood and sighed. “So where do we find him?”
Erin turned back to face the car. “I think the answer is found in an earlier passage from Revelation, from before the trumpet sounds. There is a line that reads, And another angel came and stood at the altar. Then after another few lines, it continues, The smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand. And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.”
Jordan grinned. “Well, at least that part is easy enough to interpret.”
And he meant it.
He enjoyed the look of surprise on the Sanguinist priests’ faces.
“It doesn’t take a biblical scholar to figure that one out,” Jordan continued. “Smoke from the angel’s hand? Incense? Thunder? Earthquake?”
The others eyed him with confused expressions. The countess merely looked amused. He was supposed to be the muscle, not the brains.
Erin touched the back of his wrist, allowing him to reveal what she had already figured out.
He took her fingers and squeezed them. “That sounds exactly like what happened at Masada. Remember the boy who survived? He had said he thought he smelled incense and cinnamon in the smoke. We even found traces of cinnamon in the gas samples. And the boy also mentioned that the smoke touched his hand before everyone died from the gas and the earthquake.”
“The smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand,” Rhun repeated, his voice reverential.
“Everyone on that mountaintop died.” Jordan’s words came faster now. “Only something inhuman, like an angel, could have survived that poisonous assault.”
Erin gave him a smile that warmed him to his toes. “The events match the biblical passage. More important, it points to someone whom we could actually hope to find.”
“The boy,” Rhun said, sounding unconvinced. “I spoke to him atop that mountain that day. He seemed like just an ordinary child. In shock, grief-stricken after the death of his mother and father. And he was born of the flesh. How could he be an angel?”
“Remember, Christ was also born of the flesh,” Cardinal Bernard countered. “This boy seems like a fine starting point to begin our search.”
Jordan nodded. “So where is he? Does anybody know? The last I recall, he was being evacuated off that mountaintop by helicopter, by the Israeli army. They were taking him to one of their hospitals. It shouldn’t be hard to track him from there.”
“It will be harder than you think,” Bernard said, suddenly looking worried.
That was never a good thing.
“Why would it be harder?” Erin asked, sensing she wasn’t going to like the answer.
Bernard sighed regretfully. “Because he is no longer in the custody of the Israelis.”
“Then where is he?” she asked.
Instead of answering, the cardinal turned to Brother Leopold. The German monk had remained silent near the back of the car. “Leopold, you are the most skilled with computers. My laptop is with my luggage. Father Ambrose has my passwords. I need to access my files at the Vatican. Can you help me?”
Leopold nodded. “I can certainly try.”
The monk rushed out of the dining car and headed into the galley.
Bernard turned back to the others. “We were keeping tabs on the boy, staying in contact with the Israelis who were studying him at a military hospital. His name is Thomas Bolar. The medical staff was trying to discover how he had survived the poison gas. And then—”
Leopold burst back into the car, returning with a simple black laptop in hand. He crossed to them, set it on the table, and booted it up. Adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses, Leopold typed with the speed only a Sanguinist could manage. His fingers were a blur across the keyboard, accessing the Internet, punching in passwords, connecting to a Vatican server.
Bernard looked over his shoulder, directing him every now and again.
Erin found it odd to watch these ancient men in priestly garb engaging with modern technology. It seemed like Sanguinists should be haunting churches and graveyards, not surfing the Internet. But Leopold seemed to know what he was doing. In a few minutes, he had a window open on the screen containing a grainy gray video.
Erin crowded closer to see, as did everyone else.
Only the countess hung back. From her uneasy expression, such technology must unnerve her. She had not lived through the long years like the others so that she could assimilate the changes over time. Erin wondered what it must be like to be thrust from the sixteenth century into the twenty-first. She had to hand it to the woman. As far as Erin could tell, the countess seemed to be taking it in stride, showing a surprising resilience and toughness. Erin needed to be mindful of that in her dealings with her in the future.
For now, she kept her attention fixed to the laptop.
“This is surveillance video taken from the Israeli medical facility,” Bernard said. “You should watch this, then I’ll explain more.”
On the screen, a boy sat in a hospital bed. He was dressed in a thin hospital gown, tied in the back. As they watched, the boy wiped tears from his eyes, then got up and dragged his IV pole to the window. He leaned his head against the glass and looked out into the night.
Erin felt for the boy — both his parents had died in his arms, and now he was trapped alone in a military hospital. She was glad that Rhun had taken time to spend a few minutes talking to the child, comforting him, before everything went to hell.
Suddenly, another small figure stood next to the boy at the window. The newcomer’s face was turned away from the camera. He had appeared out of nowhere, as if someone had cut out a piece of the video.
The stranger wore a dark suit coat and slacks. Thomas shrank back from him, clearly afraid. In a move too fast to follow, a knife flashed under the lights. The boy clutched his throat, blood gushing out, drenching his hospital robe.
Erin’s shoulders inched up, but she didn’t look away from the screen. Jordan pulled her closer to his side, supporting her. He must have seen his share of bloodshed and the murder of children in Afghanistan and knew how hard it was to watch such cruelty.
On the screen, Thomas stumbled away from the stranger. He yanked off a trail of wires attached to his chest. Lights flashed on the bedside machines. An alarm. The kid was trying to call for help.
Smart.
Two Israeli soldiers ran into the room, their weapons up and ready.
The stranger hurled a chair through the window, grabbed Thomas, and threw the boy out the window before the soldiers could open fire.
From the attacker’s speed, he had to be strigoi.
The stranger turned to face the soldiers, finally showing his face. He looked to be a boy himself, no more than fourteen. He sketched a quick bow to the soldiers before jumping out the window himself.
“How far was the drop?” Jordan asked, watching the soldiers rush to the window and begin silently firing below.
“Four stories,” the cardinal answered.
“So Thomas must be dead,” Jordan said. “He can’t be the First Angel.”
Erin wasn’t so sure. She glanced to Bernard as he whispered to Leopold. If Thomas was dead, why waste everyone’s time showing this video?
“The boy survived the fall,” the cardinal explained and pointed to the screen.
Another video file appeared, this one from a parking lot camera on the ground.
Caught from this angle, Thomas fell through the air, his blood-soaked hospital gown fluttering around his body like wings before he crashed headlong to the black asphalt. Shards of broken glass sparkled and danced around him.
As they watched, the boy stirred, plainly alive.
A split second later, the stranger in the suit landed, on his feet, next to him.
He grabbed Thomas by an arm and sprinted with him into the desert, vanishing quickly from view.
“We believe that the kidnapper was strigoi, perhaps in service to the Belial,” the cardinal said. “But we know for certain the child who survived Masada was no strigoi. He was reported in sunlight. The Israeli medical machines showed he had a heartbeat.”
“And I heard it, too,” Rhun added. “I held his hand. It was warm. He was alive.”
“But no human could survive a fall like that,” Leopold said, awed, still typing rapidly, as if trying to search for answers.
Erin caught a glimpse of a text box being opened, a message sent, then closed again. All done so quickly, in less than two seconds, that she failed to make out a single word.
“But Thomas survived,” Jordan said. “Like he did in Masada.”
“As if he’s under some divine protection.” Erin touched Leopold’s shoulder. “Show that first video again. I want to see that attacker’s face.”
The monk complied.
As the stranger turned toward the camera, Leopold froze the image and zoomed in. The kidnapper had an attractive face, oval, with dark eyebrows, one raised higher than the other. He had light-colored eyes, with short dark hair parted on the side.
He didn’t look familiar to her, but both Rhun and Bernard tensed with recognition.
“That’s Alexei Romanov,” Bernard said.
Erin let the shock ring through her.
The son of Czar Nicholas II…
Rhun closed his eyes, clearly aggrieved by sudden insight. “That must be why Rasputin let go of the Blood Gospel so easily back in St. Petersburg. He had already put plans in motion to kidnap this boy. He was playing an entirely different game from us, keeping cards up his long sleeves. I should have suspected as much back then.”
“You speak of the Romanovs,” the countess interrupted. “In my time, that Russian royal family lost power and were exiled to the far north. Did they then return to the throne?”
“They ruled from 1612 until 1917,” Rhun said.
“And my family.” The countess leaned forward. “What became of them? Did we also return to power?”
Rhun shook his head, looking reluctant to say more.
Contrarily, Nadia was more than happy to extend the branches of the countess’s family tree, to fill in her lost history. “Your children were charged with treason for your crimes, stripped of their wealth, and exiled from Hungary. For a hundred years, it was forbidden to speak your name in your homeland.”
The countess raised her chin a couple of millimeters, but she gave no other sign that she cared. Yet something in her eyes cracked as she turned away, revealing a well of grief behind that cold demeanor, a peek at her former humanity.
Erin changed the subject. “So Rasputin kidnapped this boy. But why? To what end?”
No one answered, and she didn’t blame anyone, remembering her own dealings with Rasputin. The monk was shrewd, conniving, and out merely for himself. To guess the twisted intentions of the Mad Monk of Russia, it would take someone equally as mad.
Or at least, a kindred soul.
The countess stirred and gazed around the room. “I would surmise he did it because he hates you all.”
As the rattling set of coaches tunneled through the bright middle of the day, Elizabeth pulled on the chain that connected her manacles to the wall of the last car.
The loathsome Sanguinist woman, Nadia, had marched her back into the darkness and secured her in this coach. The chain was locked into a hasp at waist height, the links of silver so short that she was forced to stand while the room rocked around her.
Steps away, Nadia watched her, as patient as a fox watching a rabbit den.
Elizabeth twisted her arms, trying to find a more comfortable position. The silver manacles burned in a ring of fire around her wrists, but she was more at ease here than in the dining car, where the single open curtain had allowed in a stream of sunlight. She had not showed how much it had seared her eyes whenever she looked at the woman and soldier, refusing to reveal weakness before these two humans.
As the train trundled on, she set her feet farther apart to keep from being knocked about by the rocking. She would adapt. The modern world had many powerful objects, and she would master them. She would not let fear of them rule her.
With her hands pressed against the wall, she savored the warmth of the sun-heated steel against her palms. She imagined the sun blazing strong and bright outside, crossing a blue sky with sharp white clouds. She had not seen such sights for centuries, barely remembered what they looked like. Strigoi could not stand the sun, as Sanguinists could. She missed the day, with its heat and life and growing things. She remembered her gardens, the bright flowers, the healing herbs she once grew.
But was she willing to give up her freedom as a strigoi in order to see the sky again, to convert to the pious life of a Sanguinist?
Never.
She rubbed her warmed hands together and pressed them against her cold cheeks. Even if she tried to convert, she suspected God would know that her heart was black, and the blessed wine would strike her dead.
She had agreed to help the Sanguinists, but her promise had been given under threat of death. She had no intention of keeping her word if presented with a better chance at survival. An oath sworn on pain of death was not binding.
She owed them nothing.
As if hearing her thoughts, Nadia glared at her. Once Elizabeth was free, she would make the tall woman pay for her insolence. But for now she sensed that Nadia would be a difficult captor to escape. The woman plainly loathed her, and she seemed dedicated to Rhun — although more like a fellow knight, not like a woman devoted to a man.
The same could not be said of the human woman.
Dr. Erin Granger.
Elizabeth had easily spotted the telling pink scars on the other’s neck. A strigoi had fed upon her recently and suffered her to live. A rare enough event, and certainly no ordinary strigoi would have left such careful marks. Those punctures spoke of control and care. From the awkward manner in which the woman and Rhun sat and did not speak, she suspected that Rhun had fallen again, fed again.
But in this instance, he had not killed the woman, nor turned her into a monster.
Elizabeth remembered how Erin’s heart had sped when Rhun first entered the car. She recognized the anguish that poured from the woman’s voice when she saw his wounds and spoke his name. This human seemed intertwined with Rhun in a deeper manner than the blood bond of feeding should foster.
Jealousy flared hot and venomous.
Rhun belongs to me and me alone.
Elizabeth had paid dearly for that love and refused to share it.
She thought back to that night, of Rhun in her arms, of their unspoken love for each other finally being expressed in the heat of lips, of the press of flesh, the soft words of love. She knew what was happening was forbidden a priest, but little did she know how much such laws chained the beast that truly lurked inside Rhun. Once broken, that face finally showed its fangs, its darker lusts, and tore her from her old life and into one of eternal night.
And now it seemed Rhun had loosed that same beast upon another woman, another whom he plainly cared for.
In that attraction, Elizabeth also saw possibility. Given a chance, she would use their feelings for each other against them, to destroy them both.
But for now, she must content herself with waiting. She must go along with Bernard’s group, but she held little trust in the cardinal. Not now, and certainly not during her mortal life. Back then, she had striven to warn Rhun against Bernard, sensing the depths of secrets hidden inside his heartless, sanctimonious chest.
In the neighboring car, her keen ears picked out her name being spoken.
“We cannot risk losing her,” Cardinal Bernard said. “We must know where she is at all times.”
The young monk named Christian answered. “Don’t worry. I’ve already taken measures to assure that. I will keep her on a short leash.”
Another spoke with the thick tongue of the Germans, marking him as Brother Leopold. “I will see about getting more coffee.”
Light footsteps left the table, heading to the coach at the front, where food was being prepared and where she could faintly make out another human heartbeat, another servant to this horde.
Those at the table sat silent, apparently having little to say, each probably pondering the journey ahead.
She decided to do the same and turned to Nadia. “Tell me of this Russian connected to the royal Romanovs… this Rasputin? Why does the Church have no love for him?”
Perhaps she could make an ally out of him.
Nadia sat silent as stone, but her face betrayed how she loved withholding secrets.
“Your cardinal wishes me to be part of this endeavor,” Elizabeth reminded her, pressing her. “As such, I must know everything.”
“Then let the cardinal tell you.” Nadia folded her arms.
Realizing that no quarter would be given, Elizabeth turned her attention to eavesdropping, but she lost interest as the rattling of the train grew louder as it climbed some long hill, blotting out most sounds.
Minutes later, the steel door to her prison opened, bringing in the sharper smells of food, the blaze of sunlight, and the louder heartbeats of the humans.
Cardinal Bernard entered with the younger Sanguinist, Christian. They were followed by another priest, this one human, likely the cardinal’s retainer. She recognized his sluggish heartbeat from the first car, where the food was being prepared. She was growing hungry herself — and this one had a round belly, fat cheeks, all plump with blood, a pig waiting to be slaughtered.
“We will arrive soon,” Bernard informed Nadia. “Once we leave the train, I am placing you and Christian in charge of Countess Bathory.”
“Do you not mean in charge of the prisoner?” Elizabeth corrected. “Even though I have joined your quest, do you trust me so little?”
“Trust is earned,” Christian said. “And you currently have a massive trust deficit.”
She held out her bound hands. “Can you not at least release me to move freely about this prison? With daylight outside, I cannot escape here. I do not see what harm—”
An explosion blasted away her words. As if struck by the hand of God, the entire coach lifted under them, riding atop a thunderous roar, accompanied by the fires of Hell.
Rhun moved upon the first shift of air, the first note of the explosion. He rode the blast wave as time slowed to the thickness of liquid glass.
He lunged across the table, wrapped both his arms around Erin, and hit the closed window with his shoulder. The thick curtain wrapped around his body as he crashed through. Glass raked his arms and back. Flames and roaring chased him out into the world.
At his heels as he leaped from it, the train car expanded, growing impossibly bigger until its skin split — and smoke and soot and wood burst outward in a great explosion.
Tossed high, Rhun turned his body to the side and hit the ground rolling, one arm around Erin’s back, the other pulling her head close to his chest. He and Erin rolled across the stubble of a harvested field that bordered the tracks.
The brief smell of dry grass was quickly scorched away by the bitter, chalky smell of explosives, the scratch of charcoal, and the unmistakable odor of burnt human flesh.
The train had exploded.
Someone, maybe everyone, had died.
In his arms, Erin gasped and coughed.
She yet lived — and that made him far happier than it should.
He ran his hands across her body, feeling for broken bones, for blood. He found scrapes, a few cuts, and bruises. Nothing more. His fingers entwined with hers, seeking to reassure her, feeling the shock draining the heat of her body.
He pulled her tighter to him, sheltering her.
Only then did he turn back to face the disaster spread out across the fields.
Chunks of soot-streaked metal pierced the yellow grass, littered the railroad tracks, and scattered across the smoldering fields. Pieces of the black steam engine had been blown from the track. The boiler lay a hundred yards ahead, a hole torn in its metal belly gaping at the sky.
Patches of fire ate the fields, as broken glass rained from the sky, like so much crystalline hail, all mixed with blood. He remembered the biblical quote from Revelation: There followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth.
Was he witnessing that now?
Dust and smoke roiled up from the tracks. A chunk of steel had landed mere feet away, steam hissing where its hot surface touched wet grass.
A high-pitched bell rang without pause in his ears. With one hand, he brushed glass from his robes and pulled pieces from his other arm. Still cradling Erin, he searched around him, but nothing moved.
What had become of the others?
He touched his rosary and prayed for their safety.
He finally untangled himself from Erin. She sat in the grass, her arms wrapped around her knees. Her limbs were streaked with mud and blood. She pushed hair back from her forehead. Her face was clean, protected as it was while he held her against his body.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, knowing he spoke loudly past the ringing of his ears.
She trembled, and he longed to take her in his arms again and quiet her, but the fragrance of blood wafted from her body, and he did not dare.
Instead, her amber eyes met his. He looked deeply into them for the first time since he had left her on the tunnel floor to die months before.
Her lips formed a single word.
Jordan.
She struggled to her feet and stumbled toward the tracks. He followed in her wake, scanning the wreckage, wanting to be near her when she found him.
He did not see how the soldier could have survived… how anyone could have survived.
Elizabeth burned in the field, rolling in agony.
Sunlight seared her vision, boiling her eyes. Smoke rose from her hands, her face. She curled into a ball, ducked her chin against her chest, her arms over her head, hoping they might protect her. Her hair crackled like an aura around her.
A moment ago, the train car had exploded, bursting open with a thunderclap. She flew like a dark angel through the burning brightness. Both her hands gripped the silver chain that bound her to a useless scrap of metal. She caught a glimpse of another’s hands also clasped to the chain — then the sunlight blinded her, withering her eyesight.
The mighty boom also stole her hearing, leaving behind a rushing sound inside her ears, as if the sea had torn into her skull and washed back and forth inside her head.
She tried to worm deeper into the cool mud, to escape the sunlight.
Then hands rolled her and threw darkness atop her, protecting her from the sun.
She smelled the heavy wool of a cloak and cowered beneath this thin protection. The burn quickly ebbed into an ache, giving her the hope that she might yet live.
A voice shouted near her head, piercing the sea roiling in her skull.
“Are you alive?”
Not trusting her voice, she nodded.
Who had saved her?
It could only be Rhun.
She ached for him, wanting to be held and comforted. She needed him to lead her through this pain to a future that did not burn.
“I must go,” yelled the voice.
As her head cleared, she now recognized that stern tone.
Not Rhun.
Nadia.
She pictured those other hands clasped to her chain, guiding her fall, covering her. Nadia had risked her life to hold on to that chain and save her. But Elizabeth knew such efforts were born not out of concern or love.
The Church still needed her.
Safe for now, new fears rose.
Where is Rhun? Did he yet live?
“Stay here,” Nadia commanded.
She obeyed — not that she had any choice otherwise. Escape remained impossible. Beyond the edges of her cloak lay only a burning death.
She considered for a moment casting the cloak aside, ending this interminable existence. But instead, she curled tighter, intending to survive, wrapping herself as snugly in thoughts of revenge as in heavy wool.
Erin stumbled across a field scarred by metal shrapnel from the train. Coughing on the oily smoke, her mind tried to sort it out, rolling the explosion backward in her head.
The blast must have centered on the steam engine because the locomotive was nearly obliterated. Black pieces of steel stuck out of the field like ruined trees. But it wasn’t just scorched metal that littered the fields.
A legless body lay by the tracks. She spotted an engineer’s cap.
She hurried and crouched beside him, her knees pressing into stubbly grass.
Sightless brown eyes stared at the smoky sky. A black-clad arm moved past her head and closed the dead man’s eyelids. The engineer hadn’t been involved in any prophecy. He’d just shown up to do an honest day’s work.
Another innocent life.
When will it ever end?
She lifted her face to Rhun. The priest touched his cross to his lips, the blessed silver searing that tender flesh as he whispered prayers over the dead man.
When he finished, she stood and walked on, drawing Rhun with her.
Within a few yards she came upon the second crewman, also dead. He had light brown curly hair and freckles, a smudge of soot across his cheek. He looked too young to be working on a train. She thought about his life. Did he have a girlfriend, parents who were still alive? Who knew how far the ripples of grief would reach?
She abandoned Rhun to his prayers, propelled by the urgency to find Jordan.
Moving down the tracks, she came upon the remains of what she suspected was the galley car. A stove had shot through the air and landed in a crater. Leopold had been in that compartment. She looked for him, too, but found no trace.
Continuing, she reached the ruins of the dining car. Although the front had peeled away, the back was intact. It had derailed and dug a deep furrow through the rich brown soil. A gold curtain flapped through a shattered window at the back.
She pictured the moment before the blast. Rhun must have sensed the explosion. He had yanked her from Jordan’s arms and through that window.
Rhun’s shadow fell across the earth beside her, but she didn’t turn to look at him. Instead, she searched inside the dining car, fearing to find a body, but needing to know.
It was empty.
Stepping away from the dining car, she looked over to the sleeper. The last car lay on its side, one side caved and split. To its right, she spotted movement through the smoke and ran toward it.
She quickly recognized Cardinal Bernard, covered in soot. He knelt over a figure sprawled on the ground, bent in a sigil of grief. Standing vigil behind the cardinal, Christian gripped Bernard’s shoulder.
She struggled across the wreckage to them, fearing the worst.
Christian must have sensed her approach, turning his head, revealing a face covered in black blood. Shocked by the sight of him, she tripped and almost fell headlong.
Rhun caught her and kept her going.
Ahead, Bernard wept, his shoulders heaving up and down.
It could not be Jordan.
It could not be.
She finally reached Christian, who sadly shook his head. She hurriedly stepped around the cardinal.
The man on the ground was unrecognizable — soot smeared his face, his clothing had been burned away. Her eyes traveled from his smudged face, to his bare shoulders, to the silver cross he wore around his chest.
Father Ambrose.
Not Jordan.
Bernard held both of the priest’s burnt hands in his own and gazed upon his lifeless face. She knew Ambrose had served the cardinal for many years. Despite the priest’s sour attitude to everyone else, he and the cardinal had been close. Months ago she had watched the man kneeling in the pope’s blood, trying to save the old man after his attack without a thought to his own safety. Ambrose might have been a bitter man, but he was also a staunch protector of the Church — and now he had given his life to that service.
The cardinal raised his face. “I’ve called for a helicopter. You must find the others before the police and rescue workers arrive.”
“We must also be wary of whoever blew up this train,” Christian added.
“It could have been a simple, tragic accident,” Bernard corrected, already turning back to Ambrose.
She left Bernard to his grief, tripping over smoking debris, walking around fires, her eyes scanning the scarred field. Christian and Rhun flanked her, moving with her, their heads swiveling from side to side. She hoped their keener senses could help her to discover any clue to Jordan’s fate.
“Over here!” Christian called and dropped to his knees.
On the ground in front of him, a familiar blond head.
Jordan.
Please, no…
Fear immobilized her. Her breath caught, and her eyes watered. She tried to steady herself. When Rhun took her arm, she broke free of his grip and crossed the last few feet to Jordan on her own.
He lay flat on his back. His dress blue uniform jacket lay in tatters, his white shirt under it torn to pieces.
She fell to her knees next to him and grabbed his hand. With trembling fingers, she searched for his pulse. It beat steady under her fingertips. With her touch, he opened his clear blue eyes.
She wept with relief and took his warm hand in hers.
She held him, watching his chest rise and fall, so grateful to find him alive.
Jordan’s gaze steadied and looked at her, his eyes mirroring her relief. She stroked his cheek, his forehead, reassuring herself that he was whole.
“Hey, babe,” he mouthed. “You look great.”
She put her arms around him and buried her face in his chest.
Rhun watched Erin cling to the soldier. Her first thought had been of Jordan, as it should have been. Likewise, Rhun had responsibilities as well.
“Where is the countess?” he asked Christian.
He shook his head. “When the car blew, I saw her and Nadia thrown outside.”
Into the sunlight.
Christian pointed beyond the main wreckage. “Their trajectory would have tossed them to the far side of the tracks.”
Rhun glanced down to Erin and Jordan.
“Go,” Erin said. She helped Jordan sit up and start gaining his feet unsteadily. “We’ll meet you back by Cardinal Bernard.”
Freed of this responsibility, Rhun set off with Christian. The younger Sanguinist jogged across the field, jumping holes as lightly as a colt. He seemed unaffected by the explosion, while Rhun ached everywhere.
Once beyond the tracks, Christian suddenly sped to the left, perhaps spotting something. Rhun struggled to catch up.
Out of the pall of smoke, a tall figure dressed in black limped toward them.
Nadia.
Christian reached her first and hugged her tightly. He and Nadia had often served together on prior missions for the Church.
Rhun finally joined them. “Elisabeta?”
“The demon countess still lives.” Nadia pointed to a mound a few hundred yards away. “But she’s badly burned.”
He hurried toward her cloaked body.
Christian followed with Nadia, filling her in on the status of the team.
“And what of Leopold?” Nadia asked.
Christian’s face grew graver. “He was in the galley car, closer to the explosion.”
“I will continue the search for him,” Nadia said. “You two can care for her majesty. Get her ready to go.”
As Nadia trotted off into the smoke, Rhun crossed the last of the distance to Elisabeta. Nadia had covered Elisabeta with the countess’s traveling cloak. He knelt next to the mound, smelling charred flesh.
Rhun touched the surface of the cloak. “Elisabeta?”
A whimper answered him. Pity filled him. Elisabeta was legendary for her ability to withstand pain. For her to be reduced to this, her agony must be terrible.
“She will need blood to heal,” Rhun told Christian.
“I’m not offering up mine,” Christian said. “And you have none to spare.”
Rhun leaned down to the cloak. He didn’t dare lift it to examine the extent of her injuries. Still, he slipped his hand under the cloak and found her hand. Despite the pain it must cause, she gripped his fingers, holding to him.
I will get you to safety, he promised.
He stared up at the midday skies, the crisp blue smudged by smoke.
Where could they go?
The helicopter came in fast and low and landed in an undamaged part of the field. The pilot cracked a window and waved to the group gathered at the edge of the wreckage.
“That must be our ride,” Jordan said, recognizing the expensive helicopter, a twin to the one that had rescued them out of the desert of Masada all those months ago.
Jordan took Erin’s hand, and together they navigated through the last of the rubble to the helicopter. He was shaky on his feet, but Erin seemed mostly fine. He recalled the blur as Rhun had torn Erin from his grasp and crashed through the window when the train exploded.
Rhun’s quick reaction had likely saved her life.
Perhaps he should forgive the Sanguinist priest for his prior actions, for feeding and leaving Erin to die in the tunnels under Rome, but he still couldn’t muster up enough goodwill to do so.
Ahead, the rotors kicked up dust and pieces of grass. The pilot wore the familiar midnight-blue uniform of the Swiss Guard and gestured to the back, indicating they should climb in.
Erin clambered aboard first and reached a hand down to Jordan.
Forgoing pride, he took it and allowed her to help him inside.
Once buckled in, he glanced out the open door toward the other Sanguinists. Swirling dust obscured all but the approaching forms of Christian and Rhun. Slung between them, they hauled a ragged black bundle, fully covered in a cloak.
The countess.
Bernard followed next out of the dust behind them. He carried Father Ambrose’s body. Behind him, Nadia trailed.
Christian and Rhun climbed inside. Once seated, Rhun took possession of Bathory’s form, cradling her on his lap, her draped head resting on his shoulder.
“No sign of Leopold?” Jordan asked Christian.
The young Sanguinist shook his head.
Bernard arrived and held out his bundle. Christian took it, and together the two strapped Ambrose’s body to a stretcher, their movements quick and efficient, as if they had done this a thousand times before.
And they probably had.
The cardinal stepped back from the helicopter, allowing Nadia to board. She tapped the pilot on the shoulder and pointed her thumb up to indicate that he should take off.
As planned, Bernard would remain behind to explain everything to the police, to put a public face on this tragedy. It would be a tough job, especially as he was clearly still grieving.
The rotors sped up with a roar of the engine, and the helicopter lifted.
Once high enough, it swept over the carnage.
Faces pressed to the windows, everyone searched below and came to the sad and inevitable conclusion.
Brother Leopold was gone.
Erin gripped Jordan’s arm as the helicopter sped toward a quaint stone village nestled among pines and olive groves next to a large lake. Its cobalt waters reminded her of Lake Tahoe, stirring a longing to be back in California — protected from all this death and chaos.
Not that trouble couldn’t find me there, too.
She remembered Blackjack, heard the screams of the blasphemare cat.
She knew any lasting peace would escape her until this was over.
But would it ever be truly over?
The pilot aimed for the edge of the lush volcanic crater that overlooked the lake and the village square. Surmounting its stony crest like a crown sat a massive castle with red tile roofs, two leaden domes, and massive balconies. The grounds themselves were just as impressive, divided into private manicured gardens, contemplative fishponds, and tinkling fountains. Avenues were lined by pine trees or dotted with giant holm oaks. She even spotted the ruins of a Roman emperor’s villa.
She had no trouble recognizing the pope’s summer residence.
Castel Gandolfo.
As their aircraft descended toward a neighboring helipad, she wondered about this destination. Had the residence always been their goal or was this simply a quick and convenient hideout after the explosion?
Ultimately she didn’t care. They needed rest and a place to recuperate.
Any port in a storm…
She glanced at her fellow passengers, recognizing this truth. Jordan looked haggard under a mask of soot and grime. Nadia’s stern countenance was set, but shadowed with sadness. Christian still had traces of blood streaked in the creases of his face, making him look much older, or maybe it was just exhaustion.
Across from her, Rhun hadn’t taken his eyes off the bundle in his arms, looking stricken and worried. He cradled Bathory’s cloaked head against his shoulder with one hand. The countess lay still as death in his arms.
As soon as the skids touched ground, the Sanguinists rushed Erin and Jordan off the helipad. Ambrose’s body remained on board, although each Sanguinist touched him as they disembarked, even Rhun. According to Christian, the pilot and copilot would attend to the priest’s body.
Erin and Jordan followed the others down a gravel path through a rose garden, the plants long off their bloom. A few minutes later, they reached a spade-shaped door set into the stucco garden wall. Christian opened it and led them down a corridor with a gleaming terrazzo floor. Salons and rooms opened to either side, decorated with medieval tapestries and gilt-edged furniture.
At an intersection, Nadia beckoned Rhun to the left with his burden. Christian pointed Erin and Jordan to the right.
“I’m taking you to rooms where you can wash up,” he said.
“I’m not letting Erin out of my sight,” Jordan said.
She tightened her grip on his hand. She wasn’t letting him out of her sight either.
“Already figured as much,” Christian said. “And I’m not letting either of you out of my sight until you are safe in that room. The plan is to wait for the cardinal’s return. We’ll recover and regroup, then figure out what to do next.”
With the matter settled, Jordan followed Christian. Tall windows on one side of this corridor looked out over the lake. White sails glided across the blue water, and seagulls soared above. It was a serene view, almost surreal after all the devastation and death.
Jordan was clearly less captivated, his mind elsewhere. “What do you think happened to Leopold?”
Christian touched his cross. “He was closer to the source of the explosion. His body may never be found. But the cardinal will keep searching until rescue personnel and police arrive. If Leopold’s body is found, the cardinal will claim him and bring him here.”
Reaching an oaken door, Christian unlocked it and ushered them both through, then followed them inside. He quickly crossed and closed the shutters over the windows that looked out upon the lake. He switched on a few wrought-iron lamps. The room held a double bed with a white duvet, a marble fireplace, and a seating area in front of the windows.
Christian disappeared through a small side door. Erin followed after him, trailed by Jordan. She found a simple bathroom with white walls, toilet, and sink. A shower stood in the corner, tiled in the same marble as the floor. Two thick towels rested on a low wooden table, topped by a fresh change of clothes.
It looked like she would be wearing tan pants and a white cotton shirt. Jordan would have on jeans and a brown shirt.
Hanging against the back of the bathroom door were a pair of familiar leather jackets. On their prior mission, she and Jordan had worn this very set of outerwear, constructed from the hides of grimwolves — slash-proof and tough enough to withstand strigoi bites. She stroked her hand down the battered brown leather, remembering the battles of the past.
Christian opened the medicine cabinet and took out a first-aid kit. “This should have what you need.”
He turned and marched back to the hall door. He lifted up a stout brace that leaned against the wall next to the exit and handed it to Jordan. “This is reinforced with a core of steel.”
Jordan hefted the bar. “Feels like it.”
“Once I’m on the other side, use it to brace the door.” Christian pointed to a chest at the foot of the bed. “You’ll also find weapons there. I don’t expect you’ll need them, but it’s better not to be caught off guard.”
Jordan nodded, eyeing the chest.
“Let no one in besides me,” Christian said.
“Not even the cardinal or Rhun?” she asked.
“No one,” Christian repeated. “Someone knew we were on that train. My best advice for both of you is to trust no one except each other.”
He stepped through the door and closed it behind him. Jordan lifted the heavy bar and secured it in place.
“So much for Christian’s pep talk,” she said. “That wasn’t exactly reassuring.”
Jordan moved to the chest and opened it up. He took out a machine gun and examined it. “Beretta AR 70. At least this is reassuring. Fires up to six hundred fifty rounds per minute.” Then he checked the ammunition supply in the chest and smiled as he came up with another weapon, a Colt 1911. “It’s not my own pistol, but it looks like someone did their research.”
He handed it to her.
She checked the magazine. The bullets were made of silver — fine against humans, essential against strigoi. The silver reacted with their blood, helping to even the odds. Strigoi were hard to kill — tougher than humans, able to control their blood loss, and possessing supernatural healing abilities. But they weren’t invulnerable.
Jordan next eyed the bathroom. “I’ll let you take first crack at the shower, while I see about getting a fire started.”
It was a fine plan, the best she had heard all day.
But first, she stepped close to him, inhaling his musky scent, smelling soot underneath. She tilted up and kissed him, glad to be alive, to be with him.
As she leaned away, Jordan’s eyes were pinched with concern. “You okay?”
How could I be? she thought.
She was no soldier. She couldn’t walk through fields of bodies and keep going. Jordan had trained himself, the Sanguinists, too, but she wasn’t so sure she ever wanted to be that tough, even if she could. She remembered the thousand-yard stare that Jordan sometimes got. It cost him, and she bet it cost the Sanguinists, too.
He whispered, still holding her, “I don’t mean about today. I feel like you’ve been holding something back since we met in California.”
She slipped out of his embrace. “Everyone has secrets.”
“So tell me yours.”
Panic fluttered in her chest.
Not here. Not now.
To hide her reaction, she turned and headed for the bathroom. “I’ve had my fill of secrets today,” she said lamely. “Right now, all I want is a hot shower and a warm fire.”
“I can’t argue with that.” But despite his words, he sounded disappointed.
She entered the bathroom and closed the door. She gladly shed her clothes, happy to rid herself of the smell of soot and smoke and replace it with lavender soap and a citrus shampoo. She stood for a long time under the hot spray, letting it burn away the day, leaving her skin raw and sensitive.
She toweled and slipped into a soft robe. Barefooted, she returned to the main room. The lamps had been switched off, and the only illumination came from the crackling fire.
Jordan straightened after jabbing and rolling a log into better position in the flames. He had shed his suit coat and shredded shirt. His skin shone in the firelight, bruised and crisscrossed with scratches and cuts. Across the left side of his chest, his tattoo almost seemed to glow. The artwork wrapped around his shoulder and sent tendrils partway down his arm and across part of his back. It looked like the branching roots of a tree, centered on a single dark mark on his chest.
She knew the history of that mark. Jordan had been struck by lightning when he was in high school. He had died for a short period of time before being resuscitated. The surge of energy had left its fractal mark across his skin, bursting capillaries, creating what was called a Lichtenberg figure, or a lightning flower. Before it faded, he had the pattern tattooed as a reminder of his brush with death, turning the near tragedy into something beautiful.
She drew closer, as if drawn by that residual energy.
He faced her, smiling. “Hope you didn’t use all the hot—”
She put a finger to his lips, silencing him. Words weren’t what she wanted right now. She tugged her belt loose and shrugged out of the robe. It slithered to the floor, brushing against her breasts and pooling at her ankles.
With one hand, he stroked her hair back from her neck. She arched her throat in invitation. He took it, trailing slow kisses down to her collarbone. She moaned, and he drew back, his eyes dark with passion and an unspoken question.
In answer, she pulled him by the waistband of his pants toward the bed.
Once there, he shed the last of his clothes, ripping them off and kicking them away.
Naked, aroused, he lifted her up in his arms. Her legs wrapped around his muscular thighs as he lowered her to the bed. He loomed over her, as wide as the world, shoving away everything, leaving only them, this moment.
She pulled him down for an urgent kiss, tasting him, her teeth finding his lower lip, his tongue with her own. His warm hands ran over her skin, across her breasts, leaving a trail of electricity in their wake — then slid around to her lower back to lift her higher.
She arched under him, needing him, knowing she would always need him.
His lips moved to her throat, brushing across the scars on her neck.
She moaned, pulling his head hard against her, as if begging him to bite her, to open her again. A name rose to her lips, but she trapped it inside before it escaped into the world.
She remembered Jordan begging for her secret.
But the deepest secrets are the ones we don’t know we’re keeping.
His lips moved to below her ear, his breath heating the nape of her neck. His next words groaned out of him, full of his truth, felt in the bones of her skull.
“I love you.”
She felt tears rise to her eyes. She drew his mouth to hers and whispered as their lips brushed. “And I love you.”
It was her truth, too — but perhaps not her whole truth.
Rhun carried Elisabeta down a dark passageway that smelled of wood and aged wine. This corner of the castle’s subterranean levels had once served as the pope’s personal wine cellar. Some long-forgotten rooms still held huge oak casks or racks of green bottles thick with dust.
He followed Nadia down yet another set of stairs, heading toward the floor reserved for their order. He felt his arms trembling as he held Elisabeta. He had taken a quick sip of consecrated wine aboard the helicopter. It had fortified him enough to make this journey below, but weakness still plagued him.
At last, passing down a stone passageway dug out of the volcanic bedrock, Nadia stopped at a bricked-up archway, a seeming dead end.
“I can pay the penance,” Rhun offered.
Nadia ignored him and touched four bricks, one near her head, one near her stomach, and one near each shoulder — forming the shape of a cross.
She then pressed the centermost stone and whispered words that had been spoken by members of their order since the time of Christ, “Take and drink you all of this.”
The center brick slid back to reveal a tiny basin carved in the brick below it.
Nadia unsheathed her dagger and poked its tip into the center of her palm, in the spot where nails had once been driven into the hands of Christ. She cupped her palm until it held several drops of her blood, then tipped the crimson pool sideways into the basin.
In his arms, Elisabeta tensed, likely smelling Nadia’s blood.
He stepped back a few paces, allowing Nadia to finish.
“For this is the Chalice of My blood,” she said, “of the new and everlasting Testament.”
With the last word of the prayer, cracks appeared between bricks in the archway, forming the shape of a narrow door.
“Mysterium fidei,” Nadia finished and pushed.
Stone grated against brick as the door swung inward.
Nadia slipped through first, and he followed, taking care not to brush Elisabeta’s body against the walls to either side. Once across the threshold, Elisabeta softened in his arms. She must have sensed that she was deep underground now, where sun could never reach her.
Nadia’s thin form glided ahead, revealing how much effortless speed and strength of limb she possessed compared to him. She hurried past the entrance to the castle’s Sanguinist Chapel and led Rhun toward a region seldom trespassed — toward the prison cells.
He followed. No matter how grievous her wounds, Elisabeta remained a prisoner.
Though the cells were rarely used in this age, the stone floor had been worn smooth and shiny by the centuries of boots passing this way. How many strigoi had been imprisoned down here and put to the question? Such prisoners entered as strigoi and either accepted the offer to join the Sanguines or they died down here as damned souls.
Nadia reached the nearest cell and hauled open a thick iron door. Its heavy hinges and stout lock were strong enough to hold even the most powerful strigoi.
Rhun carried Elisabeta inside and placed her atop the single pallet. He smelled fresh straw and bedding. Someone had made the room ready for her. Next to the bed, a beeswax candle sat atop a rough wooden table, casting a flickering light across the cell.
“I will fetch healing ointments for her burns,” Nadia said. “Are you safe to be alone with her?”
At first, anger rose in him, but he brought it under control. Nadia was correct to worry. “Yes.”
Satisfied, she swept away, the door thudding closed behind her. He heard the key turn in the lock. Nadia was taking no chances.
Alone now, he sat next to Elisabeta on the pallet and gently shifted the cloak to expose her small hands. He winced from the fluid leaking from broken blisters, the skin beneath them burned pink. He felt the heat radiating from her body, as if it were trying to expel the sunlight.
He drew the rest of the cloak off, but she turned away, her head hidden in the hood of her velvet cape.
“I don’t wish you to see my face,” she said, her voice a harsh rasp.
“But I can help you.”
“Let Nadia do it.”
“Why?”
“Because”—she shifted farther away—“my appearance will disgust you.”
“Do you think I care about such things?”
“I care,” she whispered, her words barely louder than a breath.
Honoring her wishes, he left her hood alone and took one of her burnt hands in his, noticing her palm was untouched. He pictured her clenching her hands in agony as the sunlight engulfed her in fire. He leaned against the stone blocks and rested, keeping hold of her hand.
Her fingers slowly closed over his own.
A deep weariness filled the marrow of his bones. Pain told him where he had been wounded — lacerations across his shoulders, scrapes on his forearms, a few burns on his back. His eyes began to drift closed when a quick knock thumped the door. A key turned in the lock, and the hinges complained.
Nadia stepped into the room. She frowned upon seeing Rhun’s hand clasped to Elisabeta’s, but she said nothing. She carried an earthenware bowl covered with a brown linen cloth. The smell rolled across the cell, filling the space.
His body quickened, and Elisabeta growled next to him.
Blood filled that bowl.
Warm, fresh, human blood.
Nadia must have collected it from a volunteer among the castle staff.
She crossed to the pallet and handed him the bowl.
He refused to take it. “Elisabeta would prefer it if you tend to her wounds.”
Nadia arched one eyebrow. “And I would prefer not to. I already saved her royal life. I will do no more.” She slipped free a leather flask and held it out to him. “Consecrated wine for you. Do you wish to drink it now or after you have tended to Countess Bathory?”
He set the flask down on the table. “I will not let her suffer a moment longer.”
“Then I will fetch you soon.” She retreated to the door and out again, relocking the cell.
A moan from Elisabeta returned him to his task.
He soaked the linen cloth in the bowl, sopping it heavily with blood. The iron scent drifted into his nostrils, even as he held his breath against it. To steady himself against a craving that rose from his bones, he touched his pectoral cross and muttered a prayer for strength.
He then picked up the hand he had been holding and slid the cloth along it, the fabric grazing her skin.
She gasped, her voice muffled by the hood.
“Have I hurt you?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Don’t stop.”
He bathed one hand, then the other. Where he touched, blisters fell away and raw skin healed. Once done, he finally reached for the edge of her hood.
She grabbed his wrist with her bloodstained fingers. “Look away.”
Knowing he could not, he drew the hood back, revealing first her white chin, streaked with grime and pink from the burn. Her soft lips had cracked and bled. The blood had dried in black rivulets from the corners of her mouth.
He steeled himself and pulled the hood fully away. Candlelight fell on her high cheekbones. Where once clear white skin had invited his touch, now he saw blackened and blistered ruin, all overlaid with soot. The soft curls of her hair were mostly gone, burned away by the sun.
Her silver eyes met his, the corneas cloudy, nearly blind.
Still, he read the fear there.
“Am I hideous to you now?” she asked.
“Never.”
He soaked the cloth and brought it to her ravaged face. Keeping his touch light, he ran it across her forehead, down her cheeks and throat. Blood smeared her skin, soaked into blisters, and stained the white pillow under her head.
The smell intoxicated him. Its warmth tingled his cold fingers, heated his palms, inviting him to taste it. His whole body ached for it.
Just one drop.
He stroked the cloth down her face again. The first pass had mostly just washed the soot away. He now attended to her damaged skin. He bathed her face over and over again, watching in wonder each time as he wiped away the damage — and unblemished skin slowly appeared. A field of black curls took root, shadowing her scalp with the promise of new growth. But it was her face that enchanted him, as flawless as the day he had fallen in love with her, in a long dead rose garden beside a now ruined castle.
He traced her lips with the soft fabric, leaving behind a thin sheen of blood. Her silver eyes opened to him, clear once again, but now smoky with desire. He bent his head toward her lips and crushed them with his own.
The taste of the crimson fire spread through his body, as swiftly as a match set to dry grass. She threaded blood-wet fingers through his hair, enfolding him in a cloud of hunger and desire.
Her mouth parted under his kiss, and he lost himself in her scent, her blood, her softness. He had no time for gentleness, and she asked for none. He had waited so long to join with her again, and she with him.
He promised himself in that moment that he would exact swift vengeance on whoever had sent her blazing into the sunlight.
But until then…
He fell atop her, letting fire and desire burn away all thought.
Burrowed deep in the giant hay bale, Leopold strove for a comfortable position. Straw pierced his robe and gouged his tender burns. Still, he dared not leave this shelter.
As the train had exploded, he had jumped clear, riding the blast wave across an expanse of stubbly fields. Only by the hand of God had he been standing in the lee of the boiler when it blew. The metal tank bore the brunt of the explosion, saving him from being incinerated on the spot.
Instead, he had been blown free of the car. He had tumbled through the air, burnt and bleeding, and skidded into the cold mud of the winter fields. Dazed and deafened, he had crawled into a hay bale to hide, to think, to plan.
He did not know then if he was the only survivor.
While he waited, he had stanched the blood flowing from his many wounds. Finally, as the ringing in his ears faded, he heard the rhythmic sound—thump, thump, thump—of a helicopter landing, muffled by the straw surrounding him.
He did not know if the aircraft had been summoned by the cardinal or if it marked the arrival of rescue workers. Either way, he kept hidden. Though he had not set the bomb himself, he knew he bore the blame for the attack. As soon as he had texted the Damnatus, informing him that everyone was on board, along with sharing their theory concerning the identity of the First Angel, the train had exploded — catching Leopold entirely by surprise.
Perhaps he should have expected as much.
Whenever the Damnatus spotted what he wanted, he moved in for the kill.
Never any hesitation.
After the helicopter lifted off and headed away, he heard Cardinal Bernard calling his name, the grief plain in his voice. Leopold longed to go to him, to assuage his sorrow, to beg for forgiveness, and to truly rejoin the Sanguinists.
But, of course, he did not.
Though brutal, the Damnatus’s goal was right and pure.
Over the next hour, more helicopters arrived, followed by rescue vehicles with sirens and shouting men and tromping feet. He curled smaller in the straw. The commotion should mask any sounds he made when he did his penance.
Finally, he could drink the holy wine and heal.
With some difficulty, he freed his leather wine flask and brought it to his lips. Using his teeth, he unscrewed the top and spit it out, and drank deeply, allowing the fire to take him away.
Far beneath the city of Dresden, Leopold knelt in a dank crypt lit by a single candle. Since the air-raid siren had sounded, no one dared show a light, fearful of drawing the wrath of the British bombers down upon them.
As he listened, a bomb detonated far overhead, the boom shaking loose pebbles from the ceiling. The church above had been struck weeks ago. Only this crypt was spared, the entrance dug out from the inside by the Sanguinists who lived there.
Leopold knelt between two other men. Like him, they were both strigoi, preparing to take their final vows as Sanguinists on this dark and violent night. Before him stood a Sanguinist priest, dressed in fine robes and cupping a golden chalice in his clean white palms.
The strigoi next to him trembled. Was he afraid that his faith was not strong enough, that the first sip of Christ’s blood would be his last?
When it came to his turn, Leopold bowed his head and listed his sins. He had many. In his mortal life, he had been a German doctor. Early in the war, he had ignored the Nazis, resisted them. But eventually the government drafted him and sent him into battlefields to care for young men ripped apart by guns and bombs or brought low by disease, starvation, and cold.
One winter night, a rogue pack of strigoi set upon his small unit in the Bavarian Alps. The half-frozen soldiers fought with rifles and bayonets, but the battle lasted no more than a handful of minutes. In the first sweep by the beasts, Leopold had been wounded, his back broken, unable to fight or move. He could only watch the slaughter, knowing his turn would come.
Then a strigoi the size of a child dragged him into the empty cold forest by his boots. He died there, his blood steaming holes into dirty white snow. All the while, the child sang in a high clear voice, a German folk song. That should have been the end of Leopold’s miserable life, but the boy had chosen to turn him into a monster.
He fought against the blood being poured into his mouth — until revulsion became hunger and bliss. As Leopold drank, the child continued to sing.
In the end, wartime was a strigoi’s paradise.
To Leopold’s great shame, he feasted.
Then one day he met a man he could not bite. His senses told him that a drop of that man’s blood would kill him. The stranger intrigued him. As a doctor, he wanted to understand this one’s secrets. So he sought him out night after night, watching him for weeks before daring to speak. When he finally did confront the stranger, the man listened to Leopold’s words, understood his disgust over what he had become.
In turn, the stranger offered him his true name, one so cursed by Christ that Leopold still dared only to think of him as the Damnatus. At that moment, Leopold was offered a path to salvation, a way to serve Christ in secret.
That was what brought him to this crypt beneath Dresden.
On his knees, listing his sins, alongside these others.
Leopold had been instructed to seek out the Sanguinists, to enfold himself among them, but to remain the Damnatus’s eyes and ears within the order.
He swore his allegiance back then — as he must do again this night.
Another bomb fell above, shaking dirt from the crypt’s roof. The penitent on his left yelped. Leopold remained silent. He did not fear death. He had been called for a greater purpose. He would fulfill a destiny that had spanned millennia.
The penitent pulled himself back under control, crossed himself, and finished his litany of sins. Eventually, his words stopped. He had given his sins up to God. He could be purified now.
“Do you repent of your sins out of the truest love to God and not out of fear of damnation?” the Sanguinist priest intoned to Leopold’s neighbor.
“I do,” the man answered.
“Then rise and be judged.” The priest’s face was invisible under his cowl.
The penitent rose, trembling, and opened his mouth. The priest lifted the golden chalice and poured claret-red wine onto his tongue.
Immediately the man began screaming, smoke roiling from his mouth. Either the creature had not fully repented or he had lied outright. No matter the reason, his soul was judged stained, and his body could not accept the holiness of Christ’s blood.
It was a risk they all took to join the order.
The creature fell to the stone floor and writhed, his shrieks echoing off the bare walls. Leopold bent to touch him, to still him, but before his hand reached him, the body crumbled to ash.
Leopold said a prayer for the strigoi who had sought to change his ways, even if his heart was impure. He knelt then, and once more folded his hands.
He finished his own long confession and waited for the wine. If his path was righteous, he would not burn to ash before this holy Sanguinist. If he and the one he served were wrong, a single drop of wine would reveal it.
He opened his mouth, allowing Christ to be poured into his body.
And lived.
Leopold came back into his trembling body, pressed on all sides by the sharp hay. He had never considered his conversion from strigoi to Sanguinist as a sin, something that needed penance.
Why had God sent this vision to him?
Why now?
For a sickening moment, he worried that it was because God knew that his conversion was done under false pretenses, knew Leopold was destined to betray the order, like the Damnatus had with Christ.
He lay there for a long time, thinking upon this, then swallowed back his fears.
No.
He had seen the vision precisely because his mission was true.
God had spared his life back then to serve the Damnatus, and He spared it again today. Once the sun sank and the rescue workers left for the night, he would leave the hay bale under the cover of dark and continue his purpose, no matter the cost.
Because God told him so.
Atop the Tiber River, Judas drew back on the sculls, and his slim wooden boat shot a gratifying distance across the water. Sunlight reflected off the silvery river and dazzled his eyes. This late in the year he savored both its light and its fading warmth.
A flock of crows circled overhead, disappearing into the bare branches of a riverside park before rising up against the bright winter sky.
Below, he kept his body working in rhythm, moving down the Tiber, stroking harder as he battled the wake of a passing boat. Larger crafts plowed through the river around him. His fragile wooden hull could easily be smashed to matchsticks in an instant. This time of year, he was the only rower who braved the frigid winter temperatures and the risk of being run down by speedboats, ferries, and cargo ships.
His phone buzzed with another text message from his receptionist.
Sighing, he knew what it said without reading it. He had watched it on the news before he climbed into his boat. The papal train had been destroyed. The cardinal alone had survived. Everyone else aboard had died.
He stroked the sculls through the water again.
With the prophesied trio gone, nothing stood in his way.
Brother Leopold’s last text message had mentioned the First Angel, the one who was destined to use the book as a weapon in the coming War of the Heavens. With the prophecy broken, this angel likely posed no further threat, but Judas did not like loose ends.
A ferry captain tooted his horn, and Judas raised a hand in greeting. The man straightened his black cap and waved back. They had greeted each other almost every day for twenty years. Judas had watched him grow from a thin young buck, uncertain on the controls, to a portly old man. Still, he had never learned his name.
He had grown to understand solitude as he watched his family and friends die. He had learned to keep his distance from others after generations of friendships had ended in death.
But what of this immortal boy Leopold had spoken of?
Thomas Bolar.
Judas wanted him. He would bargain with Rasputin, pay whatever the monk desired, and fetch this immortal child to his home. His heart quickened at the thought of meeting another like himself, but also from knowing the role that the boy was destined to play.
To help bring about the end of the world.
It was a shame he hadn’t met this boy earlier in his long life, to have someone to share his endless span of years, another who was as ageless and as unfettered by time.
Still, Judas had been offered such a chance centuries before, and he had wasted it.
Perhaps this is my penance.
As he pulled on the oars, he pictured Arella’s dark skin and gold eyes. He remembered the first ride that he had taken with her, the night they were reunited at the Venetian masquerade. Then, too, he had manned a wooden boat, driven the craft where he wanted it to go, never sensing how little control he had.
Their gondola glided over the calm water of a dark canal, the stars shining above, a full moon beckoning. As he poled the craft through a light mist, passing alongside a grand Venetian house, the reek of excrement and waste washed over their craft, intruding on their pleasant night like some sulfurous shade.
He scowled at the sewage pipe leaking tepidly into the canal.
Noticing his attention and expression, Arella laughed. “Is this city not refined enough for your tastes?”
He gestured at the rooms above full of laughter and decadence, then to the sludge fouling the water below. “There are better ways of ridding such waste.”
“And when it is time, they will find them.”
“They have found them and lost them.” Judas’s voice held the bitterness he had acquired from watching the fate of men.
She trailed long dark fingers along the hull’s black lacquer. “You speak of the former wonders of Rome, when the city was at its splendorous best.”
He poled the boat away from the lighted houses and back toward his inn. “Much was lost when that city fell.”
She shrugged. “It shall be regained. In time.”
“In times past, the healers of Rome knew how to cure diseases from which the men of this era still suffer and die.”
He sighed at how much had been lost to the darkness of this age. He wished that he had studied medicine, that he could have preserved such knowledge after the libraries burned and the men of learning were put to the sword.
“This age will pass,” Arella assured him. “And the knowledge will be found again.”
Silvery moonlight shone on her hair and her bare shoulders, leaving him wondering about this beautiful mystery before him. After discovering each other again, they had danced most of the night away, sweeping across wooden floors, until finding themselves here as dawn neared.
He finally broached the subject that he had been reluctant to raise all evening, fearful of the answer.
“Arella…” He slowed the pace of the boat and let it drift through the mists on its own, as undirected as a leaf. “By my name alone, you know my sin, my crime, and the curse laid upon me by Christ, to march these endless years. But how are you able… what are you…?”
He could not even form the question fully on his lips.
Still, she understood and smiled. “What does my name tell you?”
“Arella,” he repeated, letting it roll off his tongue. “A beautiful name. Ancient. In old Hebrew, it means a messenger from God.”
“And it is a fitting name,” she said. “I have often carried messages from God. In that way also, we two are alike. Both servants to the heavens, bound to our duty.”
Judas snorted softly. “Unlike you, I have received no special messages from above.”
And how he wished he would have. After the bitterness of his curse waned, he had often wondered why this punishment had been exacted upon his flesh, leaving it undying. Was it merely penance for his sin or was it for some purpose, a goal he had not yet come to understand?
“You are fortunate,” she said. “I would gladly accept such silence.”
“Why?” he pressed.
She sighed and touched the silver shard hanging from around her neck. “It can be a curse to see dimly into the future, knowing of a tragedy to come but not knowing how to avert it.”
“So then you are a prophetess?”
“I was once,” she said, her dark eyes flicking up to the moon and back. “Or should I say, many times. In the past, I once bore the title of the Oracle of Greece, another time the Sibyl of Erythraea, but throughout the ages, I was called countless other names.”
Shocked, he sank to the seat before him. He kept a grip on the pole in the water, while he took her hand in his. Despite the cool night, he felt the heat coming off her skin, far warmer than the touch of most men and women, beyond that of any human.
Her lips curved into the already familiar half smile. “Do you doubt me? You who have lived to see the world change and change again?”
The most remarkable thing was that he did not.
As the gondola drifted silently in the moonlight, a half smile played across her lips, as if she knew his thoughts, guessing what he had begun to suspect.
She waited.
“I do not pretend to know such things,” he started, picturing her in his arms, dancing with her. “But…”
She shifted in her seat. “What do you not pretend to know?”
He squeezed the fierce heat of her palm and fingers.
“The nature of one such as you. One given messages from God. One who endures across the ages. One of such perfection.”
He blushed as he said these last words.
She laughed. “Am I then so different from you?”
He knew deep in his bones that she was — both by nature and by character. She was an embodiment of good, whereas he had done terrible things. He gazed at the wonder before him, knowing another name for a messenger of God, another name for the word Arella.
He forced himself to state it out loud. “You are an angel.”
She folded her hands in front of her, as if in prayer. Slowly, a soft golden light emanated from her body. It bathed the gondola, the water, his face. The warmth of its touch suffused him with joy and holiness.
Here was another eternal being — but she was not like him.
Where he was evil, she was good.
Where he was dark, she was light.
He closed his eyes and drank in her radiance.
“Why have you come to me? Why are you here?” He opened his eyes and looked at the water, the houses, the sewage in the canal, then back to her — back to a beauty beyond measure. “Why are you on Earth and not in Heaven?”
Her light dimmed, and she resembled an ordinary woman again. “Angels may descend and visit Earth.” She looked up at him. “Or they may fall.”
She stressed that last word.
“You fell?”
“Long ago,” she added, reading the shock and surprise in his face. “Alongside the Morning Star.”
That was another name for Lucifer.
Judas refused to believe she had been cast out of Heaven. “But I sense only goodness in you.”
She gazed at him, her eyes patient.
“Why did you fall?” he pressed, as if this were a simple question on a simple night. “You could not have done evil.”
She looked down at her hands. “I kept my knowledge of Lucifer’s pride hidden in my heart. I foresaw his coming rebellion, yet stayed silent.”
Judas tried to fathom such an event. She had kept a prophecy concerning the War of the Heavens from God, and for that she was cast down.
Arella raised her head and spoke again. “It was a just punishment. But unlike the Morning Star, I did not wish ill of mankind. I chose to use my exile to watch over God’s flock here, to continue to serve Heaven as I could.”
“How do you serve Heaven?”
“However I can.” She brushed a speck from her skirt. “My greatest act was during your age, when I protected the Christ child from harm, watching over him while he was but a babe, defenseless in this hard world.”
Judas bowed his head in shame, reminded how he had failed to do the same when Jesus was older. Judas had betrayed not only the Son of God — but also his dearest friend. He felt again the weight of the leather bag of silver coins that the priests had given him, the warmth of Christ’s cheek under his lips when he kissed him to mark him to his executioner.
Unable to keep the envy from his voice, he asked, “But how did you protect Christ? I do not understand.”
“I came before Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, shortly after Christ was born. I told them what I foresaw, of the coming slaughter of innocents by King Herod.”
Judas gulped, knowing this story, recognizing anew who shared his boat.
“You were the angel who told them to flee to Egypt.”
“I also led them there, taking them to where their son could grow up sheltered from harm.”
Judas now understood how very different she was from him.
She had saved Jesus.
Judas had killed him.
His breathing grew heavier. He had to stand again, to move. He returned to slowly poling the gondola down the canal, trying to picture her life here on Earth, a stretch of time far longer than his brief span.
He finally asked another question, one just as important to him. “How do you stand the time?”
“I pass through it, just as you do.” Again, she touched the shard on her neck. “For time beyond measure, I have served mankind as a seer, a prophetess, an oracle.”
He imagined her in this role, wearing the simple robes of a Delphic priestess, sharing words of prophecy. “Yet you do this no more?”
She stared out across the dark waters. “I still see occasional glimpses of what is to come, of time rolling ahead of me as surely as it trails behind me. I cannot stand against these visions.” A line of sorrow appeared between her brows. “But I no longer share them. To know my prophecies has brought more suffering to mankind than pleasure, and so I keep such futures a secret.”
The inn appeared through the mists. He steered his gondola toward the stone dock. Once he drew abreast of it, two men in livery hurried to secure the boat. One held out a gloved hand to the beautiful lady. Judas steadied her with a palm held against the small of her back.
Then shadows fell out of the darkness above and landed on the dock, forming the shapes of men — but they were not men. He saw the sharp teeth, the pale, feral faces.
Many times he had fought such creatures, and many times he had lost. Still, with his immortality, he always healed, and his tainted blood always destroyed them.
He pulled Arella behind him in the boat, letting the beasts take the men from the hotel. He could not save them, but perhaps he might save her.
He swung his pole like a club, while her beautiful hands fumbled with the ropes that secured them to the dock. Once free, he pushed the gondola away. It heeled to one side, then righted itself.
But they were not fast enough.
The creatures sprang across the water. It was an impossible leap for a man, but a simple one for such beasts.
He yanked a dagger from the sheath in his boot and thrust it deep into the chest of the larger of the two. Cold blood washed across his hand, down his arm, and soaked into his fine white shirt.
No man would have survived the blow, but this creature barely slowed, knocking his arm aside and pulling out the dagger from its own belly.
Behind him, the second beast had Arella on her back and crawled across her soft body.
“No,” she whispered. “Leave us be.”
She pulled the silver shard from her throat and slashed its sharp edge across the creature’s neck.
A scream ripped from its severed throat, followed by flames that quickly swept its cursed form. Entirely on fire, it leaped for the cool darkness of the canal, but only ash fell to the water, the body already completely consumed.
Seeing this, the larger beast vaulted high, hit the neighboring bank, and bounded into the darkness of the city.
Arella dipped the shard into the canal and dried it on her skirt.
He scrutinized the sliver in her hands. “How?”
“This is a piece of a sacred blade,” she explained and hung it around her neck again. “It kills any creature it pierces.”
Judas’s heart quickened.
Could it kill the unkillable — like him?
Or her?
Sorrow crossed her face as if she knew his thoughts, confirming what he had just imagined. She wore the instrument of her own destruction around her slender neck, a way to escape this prison of endless years. And from her expression, she must have been sorely tempted occasionally to use it.
He understood that desire. For years uncounted, he had sought to end his life, enduring unspeakable pain in the attempts. And still he lived. The simple right of death was granted to all other creatures. Even the beasts they had fought here could simply walk into the sunlight and end their unholy existence.
His gaze fell again on the silver shining between her breasts, knowing that the death he had sought for so long was close. He only had to take it.
He reached out — and took her hand instead, drawing her up to him, to his lips.
He kissed her, so very glad to be alive.
Upon the Tiber, in the brightness of the midday sun, Judas thought back to that moment, to that kiss in the dark. Regret swelled inside him, knowing what would follow, that their relationship would end so badly.
Perhaps I should have grabbed that shard and not her hand.
He had never learned where she had obtained it, nor anything else about that sacred blade. But in the end, they each had their secrets to keep.
He touched his breast pocket and removed an ice-cold stone roughly the size and shape of a deck of cards. It was made of a clear green crystal, like an emerald, but deep in its heart was a flaw, a vein of ebony black. He lifted the stone toward the sun, turning it this way and that. The black flaw shivered in the brightness, waning to a pinpoint, but still there. Once he returned the crystal to the shadows of his pocket, the flaw would grow again.
Like a living thing.
Only this mystery thrived in darkness, not light.
He had found the stone during the years that followed after Arella, after he had discovered why he walked this long path on Earth. During that dark time of his life, he had lost himself to the study of alchemy, taught by the likes of Isaac Newton and Roger Bacon. He had learned much, including how to animate his clockwork creatures, how to manipulate the power found inside his blood.
He had come upon the crystal while searching for the mythical philosopher’s stone, a substance said to grant eternal life. He had hoped it would offer a clue to his own immortality. He had unearthed the crystal from under the cornerstone of a ruined church.
In the end, it wasn’t the philosopher’s stone — but something far more powerful, tied to death not immortal life. He rubbed his thumb across the mark carved on the underside of the stone. After years studying both this symbol and the stone, he knew many of its secrets — but not all.
Still, he knew in the right hands this simple green stone could upset the balance of life on Earth. For centuries, he had waited for the right time to release its evil into the world, to accomplish what he had been put on Earth to do.
He pocketed the stone and stared up at the sun.
At last, it was now time.
But first he needed to secure two angels.
One from the past, one from the present.
Far above the deck of the icebreaker, Tommy gripped the metal cross braces of a red crane, holding tightly with his thick gloves. He had no fear of death, knowing a plunge to the hard steel below wouldn’t kill him — but he could do without the pain of a shattered back, pelvis, and skull.
Instead, he carefully pulled himself higher.
His captors let him climb whenever he wanted.
They also had no fear of Tommy’s death — or escape.
He worked his way around to the back of the crane. Even with the biting wind, he loved being up here. He felt free, leaving his fears and concerns below.
As the Arctic sun sat leadenly on the horizon, refusing to fully rise this time of year, Tommy stared at the endless spread of sea ice, at the dark trail of open water forged by the bow of the ship. The only living things for miles around were the crew of the icebreaker. He wasn’t sure if Alyosha or the kid’s master counted as living things.
A creak of a door drew his gaze from the horizon back to the deck. A dark shape stepped through a hatch, having to bend his tall form to exit. He held the edges of his robe against the fierce wind — not because he was cold, but simply to restrain the wool from whipping about his body. It was easy to spot the thick beard, the dour expression.
It was Alyosha’s master.
Grigori Rasputin.
The Russian monk held a satellite phone in one hand.
Curious, Tommy climbed toward him, intending to eavesdrop from above.
Aboard the ship, everyone went dead silent whenever Tommy entered a cabin. They looked at him as if he were an alien creature — and maybe he was now. But from up here, unseen, he could hear and watch ordinary life pass below. It was another reason he liked climbing up here. It comforted him to watch somebody smoke or whistle or joke, even if he couldn’t understand the Russian.
Quietly, he worked his way down until he reached a perch close enough to listen, while keeping out of direct view of Rasputin.
The monk paced below him, muttering in Russian and glaring out at the ice. He kept checking his phone, as if expecting a call. Something clearly had the guy agitated.
Finally, the phone rang.
Rasputin snapped the phone to his ear. “Da?”
Tommy kept very still on his braced perch. He prayed the person on the other line spoke English. Maybe he could learn something.
Please…
Rasputin cleared his throat after listening for a full minute and spoke with a heavy accent. “Before we negotiate for the boy,” he said, “I want a photograph of the Gospel.”
Tommy was relieved to hear English, but what did Rasputin mean by negotiate for the boy? Was someone trying to buy him? Was this call about his freedom or another prison?
If only I could hear the other end of the conversation.
Unfortunately that wish wasn’t granted.
“I know what the Gospel revealed, Cardinal,” Rasputin growled. “And I won’t negotiate unless I can verify that it remains in your possession.”
Questions popped like firecrackers in Tommy’s head: What gospel? What cardinal? Was he talking to someone in the Catholic Church? Why?
Tommy pictured the eyes of the priest who had comforted him after the death of his parents atop Masada. He remembered the man’s concern. The priest had even offered a prayer for his mother and father, though he knew they were both Jewish.
Angry sounds erupted from the other end of the phone, loud enough to reach Tommy’s perch.
Rasputin said something again, switching from English to what sounded like Latin.
He recalled the priest’s prayer had also been in Latin.
Was there some connection?
“Those are my terms,” Rasputin spat out and ended the call.
His pacing resumed again, until his phone beeped with an incoming text.
Rasputin looked at the screen and sank to his knees on the icy deck. His face looked rapturous as he scanned the ice, clutching the phone between his palms as if it were a prayer book.
Tommy quietly leaned out from the crane to stare down at the screen. He couldn’t make anything out, but he guessed it was the photo of the gospel that Rasputin had demanded to see.
The phone pealed again.
Rasputin answered it, on his knees, plainly unable to keep the delight from his voice. “Da?”
A long pause followed while the monk listened.
“Very satisfactory,” he said, touching his cross with a thick finger. “But, Cardinal Bernard, we could always meet in St. Petersburg for the exchange? I would love to give you a demonstration of Russian hospitality. Father Korza enjoyed it very much when he visited me last time.”
Tommy jolted, almost falling off his perch.
He had forgotten the priest’s name, but he recognized it upon hearing it now.
Korza.
Before he could ponder this new mystery, Rasputin bared his teeth, exposing his sharp fangs. “So then, neutral ground,” he said with a chuckle. “How about Stockholm?”
Rasputin listened for a stretch, then said his good-byes and hung up the phone. The monk climbed back to his feet and stared out at the ice for a long time.
Tommy was afraid to move, so he watched and waited.
The monk tilted his head and looked up at Tommy, his smile colder than the ice surrounding the ship. Rasputin must have known Tommy had been there the entire time. He suspected the monk might have purposefully switched to English, to make sure Tommy understood the gist of the conversation.
But why?
Rasputin wagged a finger at him. “Be careful up there. You may be an angel, but you haven’t got your wings yet. I’ll have to see about getting you a pair before we leave.”
Harsh laughter echoed across the deck.
What did he mean by that?
Tommy suddenly sensed he was in much more danger than a moment ago. He prayed for someone to rescue him, picturing the face of Father Korza.
But was that priest good or bad?
Lost in blood and fire, Rhun pulled his lips from Elisabeta’s mouth and brought them to her throat. His tongue slid along veins that had once throbbed with her heartbeats.
She groaned under him. “Yes, yes, my love…”
His fangs grew, ready to pierce her tender flesh and drink what she offered.
Her alabaster throat beckoned.
At last, he would be joined with her. Her blood would flow in his veins, as his had flowed through hers. He dropped his eager lips to her welcoming throat.
He opened his mouth, baring hard teeth to soft flesh.
Before he could bite down, hands suddenly grabbed him. He was yanked off Elisabeta and slammed against the stone wall. He snarled and fought, but his captor hung on like a wolf to an elk.
He heard two clicks.
Then another pair of hands joined the first.
As crimson fire slowly dimmed from his vision, he saw Elisabeta handcuffed to the bed, fighting to get free. The burn of silver blistered her delicate wrists, marring what he had just healed, just kissed.
Nadia and Christian held him pinioned to the wall. At full strength, he might have been able to break free, but he was still weak. Their words penetrated his fog, revealing themselves to be prayers, reminding him who he was.
Spent, he sagged in their grasps.
“Rhun.” Nadia’s grip did not loosen. “Pray with us.”
Obeying the command in her voice, he moved his lips, forced out words. His bloodlust slowly waned, but comfort did not return in its place, only emptiness, leaving him weary, consumed.
The two Sanguinists bore him from the cell, and Nadia locked the door.
Carried a few cells down, Christian laid him atop a bed there.
Am I a prisoner now, too?
“Heal thyself.” Nadia pressed a flask of wine into his palm.
She and Christian closed and locked the cell door.
He lay on his back on the musty pallet. The mildewed scent of old straw and stone dust filled the room. He longed to return to Elisabeta’s cell, to lose himself in the scent of blood. With both hands, he gripped his pectoral cross and let the silver sear his palms, but it failed to center his mind.
He knew what he must do.
He reached to the flask, opened it, and drained its entire contents in one long swallow. The fire of Christ’s blood would leave no room for doubt. The holiness blazed down his throat and exploded inside him, hollowing him out, burning away even the emptiness from a moment ago.
Clutching his cross again, he closed his eyes and waited for his penance to wash over him. The price of Christ’s blessing was to relive one’s worst sins.
But what would the consecrated blood show him now?
What could be strong enough to match the sin in his soul?
With the moon high, Rhun crossed himself and stepped across the tavern’s threshold. It was the only gathering place in a small hamlet known for the quality of its honey. As he entered, the stench of mead mingled with the iron smell of spilled blood.
A strigoi had been here. A strigoi had killed here.
A barmaid, thin and riddled with sores, lay sprawled next to the corpulent innkeeper on the filthy floor. No heartbeats echoed from their chests. They were dead and would remain so.
Broken crockery crunched under his boots.
Firelight gleamed on his silver blade.
Bernard had trained Rhun with this weapon, along with many others, readying him for his first mission as a Sanguinist. It had been a year ago to this very day that Rhun had lost his own soul to a strigoi attack, taken down beside his sister’s grave.
Today he must begin to redeem himself.
Bernard had ordered him to find the beast that had been terrorizing the local village. The rogue strigoi had arrived only days before but had already killed four souls. Rhun must turn its foul appetites to holy ones, as Bernard had done with him, or slay the beast.
A creak drew his attention to the corner where a rough-hewn wooden table had been pushed up against the wall. His sharp vision picked out a shape in the darkness beneath it.
The strigoi he sought crouched there.
Another sound reached his ears.
Weeping.
In a single bound, Rhun crossed the distance to the table, yanked it away with one hand, and hurled it across the room. With his other hand, he dropped his blade against a dirty white throat.
A child.
A boy of ten or eleven gazed up at him, his eyes wide, his short brown hair trimmed by loving hands. Dirty fingers wrapped around his bare bony knees. Tears stained his cheeks — but blood stained his chin.
Rhun dared show no mercy. Too many Sanguinists had died because they had underestimated their prey. An innocent young face often masked a centuries-old killer. He reminded himself of that, but the child seemed harmless, piteous even.
He spared a quick glance to the dead bodies on the floor, reminding himself not to be fooled. The boy was far from harmless.
He twisted the boy around and clutched him against his chest, gripping him from behind, pinning his arms down. Rhun dragged him to the fireplace. A mirror hung above a crude wooden mantel.
The reflection showed the child to be quiet in his embrace, unresisting.
Unhappy brown eyes met his in the mirror.
“Why am I a monster?” those young lips asked.
Rhun faltered at the unexpected question, but he took strength from what he had been taught by Bernard. “You have sinned.”
“But I did not, not of my own will. I was a good boy. A creature broke through my window in the night. It bit me. It made me feed on its blood, then fled. I did not ask for that to happen. I fought against it. Fought with all my strength.”
Rhun remembered his own initial struggles against the strigoi who had stolen his soul and how he had succumbed in the end, embracing the bliss that was offered to him. “There is a way to stop the evil, to serve God again.”
“Why would I want to serve a god who let this happen to me?”
The child didn’t seem to be angry, merely curious.
“You can turn this curse into a gift,” he said. “You can serve Christ. You can live by drinking His holy blood, not the blood of humans.”
The child’s eyes strayed to the bodies on the floor. “I didn’t want to kill them. Truly, I didn’t.”
Rhun loosened his hold. “I know. And you can stop killing now.”
“But”—the child met his gaze in the mirror again—“I liked it.”
Something in the boy’s eyes sang to the darkness inside him. Rhun knew this first mission was as much a test of him as it was of the boy.
“It is a sin,” Rhun stressed.
“Then I will end up in Hell.”
“Not if you turn from this path. Not if you dedicate yourself to a life of service to the Church, to Christ.”
The child considered this, then spoke. “Can you promise me that I won’t go to Hell if I do as you say?”
Rhun hesitated. He wished he could offer a sounder truth to the boy.
“It is your best hope.”
Like so much in his life, it was a matter of faith.
A burning log slipped off the fire and rolled against the fireplace stones. Bright sparks flew onto the floor and extinguished there. Rhun sensed that the morning approached swiftly. The child looked toward the window, likely feeling it, too.
“You must decide soon,” Rhun said.
“Does the sun burn you?” the child asked, wincing from remembered pain.
“Yes,” he said. “But through Christ’s blessing I can walk under the noon sun. His blood gives me the strength and holiness for such.”
The boy’s round eyes looked doubtful. “What if I drink His blood but don’t truly believe?”
“Christ will know the falsehood. His blood will burn you to ash.”
The child’s small body shivered in his arms. “Will you let me go if I say no?”
“I cannot allow you to keep killing the innocent.”
The boy tilted his head toward the couple on the floor. “They were less innocent than I ever was. They stole from travelers, they trafficked in whores, and they once slit the throat of a man to steal his purse.”
“God will judge them.”
“But you will judge me?” the child asked.
Rhun winced.
That was his role, was it not?
Judge and executioner.
His voice faltered. “We have little time. Sunrise is only—”
“I always had little time, and now I have none at all.” Tears appeared and ran down his cheeks. “I will not go with you. I will not become a priest. I did nothing wrong to become this monster. So do it now. And do it quickly.”
Rhun gazed into those wet but resolute eyes.
It is God’s will, he reminded himself.
Still, he hesitated as the burning sun threatened.
What had this child done to deserve to be turned into a beast? He had been innocent, he had fought evil when attacked, and he had lost to it.
Rhun had been no different — except that he had chosen to serve Him.
The smell of cold blood drifted from the bodies on the floor. Such wreckage was what the boy would leave behind him to the end of his days.
“Forgive me,” Rhun whispered.
The boy said one word that would haunt him for centuries to come.
In spite of that, he drew the blade across the child’s throat, spattering dark blood across the mirror.
Rhun came to himself on the floor of the cell. At some point, he had crawled under the bed and curled into a ball, weeping. He lay there alone, staring at the slats of the bed, only a handsbreadth from his face.
Why was I shown this moment?
He had done as he was instructed, obeying the word of God.
How was that a sin that needed penance?
Was it because I hesitated at the end?
He climbed from under the bed and sat on its edge. He planted his elbows on his knees, dropped his head into his hands, and prayed for solace.
But none came.
Instead, he remembered the boy’s clear brown eyes, his high voice, how he had nestled back against Rhun and raised his chin so that the blade would find a true home.
Rhun remembered asking him for forgiveness.
The boy had answered.
No.
Still, in the name of God, he had slaughtered the child.
Since that time many innocent faces had died under his blade. He no longer paused, no longer hesitated. He killed without a pang of regret. His years of service had led him to this place — to where he could slaughter children without remorse.
Covering his face, he wept now.
For himself, and for the boy with brown eyes.
Jordan stretched beneath the bedsheets, every part of his naked body in contact with Erin’s. She murmured in her sleep, and he pulled her closer against him.
God, how he’d missed her.
A tap on the door woke Erin, clearly startling her. She sat up quickly. Blond hair brushed her shoulders, and the blanket fell down from her bare breasts. In the dim light coming through the shuttered windows, she looked beautiful.
He reached for her, unable to stop himself.
Christian called through the door, sounding very amused with himself. “You two have fifteen minutes! So finish what you started… or start what you want to finish. Either way, you’ve been given fair warning.”
“Thanks!” Jordan called back and grinned at Erin. “You know it’s a mortal sin to disobey a priest’s direct order.”
“Somehow I don’t think that’s true,” she said with a relaxed smile — then pointed to the shower, to the promise of hot soapy water and naked skin. “But maybe for the sake of our souls, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
He matched her grin, hauled her into his arms, and carried her toward the bathroom.
By the time Christian knocked again, they were both showered, dressed, and strapped with their new weapons. Despite the scrapes and bruises, Jordan hadn’t felt so good in a long time.
Once out in the hall, Christian put a finger to his lips and handed each of them a small flashlight.
What is this about? Jordan wondered.
Still, he trusted Christian enough not to question the man’s actions. Jordan and Erin followed him to the end of the corridor, down a series of stairs, and through a long tunnel that had no lights.
Jordan clicked on his flashlight, and Erin did the same.
Christian set a grueling pace down the passageway. It looked hewn out of the natural bedrock and stretched at least a mile. Finally Christian reached a steel door at the end and stopped. He entered digits in an electronic keypad and stepped back. The door swung soundlessly inward. It was a good foot thick and could probably withstand a mortar blast.
Bright sunlight flowed into the dark passageway.
Jordan smelled pine and loam.
Must be an emergency exit, one possibly designed to whisk the pope to safety in case of a threat at the castle.
Christian stepped through, then motioned for them to keep close.
Growing worried at all the subterfuge, Jordan shifted his assault rifle into a ready position and kept Erin between him and Christian. He wanted her protected front and back.
They stepped into a dense evergreen forest. It was cold beneath the shadowy bower. As he walked, his breath hung in the quiet air. A carpet of fallen pine needles muffled the sound of his feet.
Erin zipped up her wolf-leather jacket.
Even that small sound was too loud for this quiet forest.
Ahead of them, three figures melted out of the shadows. While Christian relaxed, Jordan kept firm hold of his rifle. Then he saw it was Nadia, leading Rhun and Bathory. Or at least he assumed it was the countess, as the woman was veiled from head to toe against the sun. But the silver handcuff secured to one of her thin wrists left little doubt that it was Bathory. The other cuff was fastened to Rhun.
The Sanguinists were taking no chances with the countess.
Personally, Jordan would rather be handcuffed to a cobra.
Nadia motioned Jordan behind the thick bole of a pine for a private meeting. It was unnerving that no one spoke. He gave Erin’s elbow a quick squeeze, leaving her with Christian, then followed Nadia.
Once out of sight. Nadia pulled out a single thick sheet of paper, folded and sealed with red wax, bearing the insignia of a crown with two crossed keys.
The papal seal.
With one long fingernail she broke the seal and unfolded the paper to reveal a hand-drawn map of Italy. A blue line traced north from Castel Gandolfo, ending near Rome. Highway numbers were marked, along with a timetable.
Nadia lifted a lighter and rasped a flame to life, ready to burn the paper, her eyes on him.
Clearly he was supposed to commit this map to memory.
Sighing silently, he memorized the highways and timetables. Once done, he met her eyes.
She mimed a driving motion and pointed to him.
Looks like I’m driving.
She lifted the lighter to the page. Yellow flames licked up the thick paper, consuming everything to ash. The purpose of all this pantomime was plain. Jordan, and Nadia, and whoever wrote the note — probably the cardinal — were the only ones who were supposed to know their destination and route.
They weren’t giving the bomber another chance to take them all out.
With the matter settled, Nadia led him back to where the others waited.
Once they were all together, they set off across the forest to a parking lot. Only two vehicles were parked there: a black Mercedes SUV with dark tinted windows and a Ducati motorcycle, also black and with lines that screamed speed.
He looked longingly at the bike, but he knew he would end up with the SUV.
Proving this, Nadia hiked a leg over the motorcycle and raised an eyebrow toward him. He grinned, remembering their wild ride through Bavaria a few months back. He’d never been so scared or exhilarated. Her preternatural reflexes had let her handle the bike at speeds he had not imagined possible.
But that wasn’t going to be today.
She tossed him the keys to the SUV before starting up her bike and roaring off.
Jordan’s group headed for the SUV. Rhun helped the countess into the back, flanked on her other side by Christian. Jordan held open the front passenger door for Erin. He was not about to let her sit in the back with Rhun and the countess.
Even the front seat was too close to that pair.
As the vehicle fled up a road paved to a smooth black finish, Elizabeth clenched her free hand into a fist. Automobiles terrified her. In Rome, she had avoided their foul smells, their grumbling engines. She had no desire to get near one, and now she sat inside one.
It was very like a carriage from her day, except such carriages were never so fast. Never had a horse traveled across the ground at such a pace. How did the soldier maintain control over it? She knew the vehicle was a mechanical device, like a clock, but she couldn’t help thinking of it spilling them from its warm leather cocoon and dashing their brains against the hard road.
She monitored the hearts of the humans in the front, using them to measure the potential danger. Right now, both hearts beat at a slow, relaxed pace. They did not fear this belching, growling beast.
She did her best to mirror their emotions.
If they do not show fear, she could not allow herself to either.
As the minutes passed, her initial terror dulled into simple boredom. The black ribbon of road unspooled before her with an eerie sameness. Trees, villages, and other automobiles passed to either side, unremarkable and unremarked.
Once her fear settled, her thoughts returned to Rhun. She remembered him holding her hand, his lips on her throat. He was not so passionless and dedicated to the Church as he seemed — not now or before. He had come so close again to betraying his vows in the cell.
She knew it was not mere bloodlust.
He wanted her.
He still loves me.
Of all the strangeness of this modern world, that struck her as the oddest. She considered this now, knowing she would wait for the right opportunity to exploit it.
To break free.
Perhaps to break them both free.
The automobile passed a row of rustic Italian houses. In a few windows, she glimpsed people moving about inside. She envied them the simplicity of their existence — but she also recognized how stifled they were, trapped by the span of one lifetime, living lives of frailty, forever worn down by passing years.
Such fragile and fleeting creatures, these humans were.
After more driving, the automobile entered a vast field of the same hard material as the road and pulled beside a giant metal structure with massive open doors. The soldier turned the key, and the automobile’s growling ended.
“What is this place?” she asked.
Rhun answered, “A hangar. A place that houses airplanes.”
She nodded. She knew airplanes, having seen their lights in the night sky often over Rome. In her small apartment, she had pored over pictures of them, fascinated by such wonders of this age.
In the shadows of the hangar, she spotted a small white airplane with a blue stripe on its hull.
From a doorway in its side, Nadia appeared at the top of a short set of stairs. Elizabeth’s fangs drew a fraction longer, her body remembering the countless small humiliations the tall woman had subjected her to.
Rhun guided Elizabeth out of the automobile, their movements clumsy because of the burning shackles that bound them together. They followed the others into the deep shadows of the building.
Nadia joined them. “I’ve checked the aircraft thoroughly. It is clean.”
Rhun turned to Elizabeth. “It is dark enough inside here. If you like, you can remove your veil for now.”
Happy to do so, she reached up with her free hand and pulled the cloth away. Cool air flowed across her face and lips, bringing with it the smell of tar and pitch and other scents that were acrid, bitter, and burnt. This was an era that seemed to run on fire and burning oil.
She kept her face away from the open doors. Even the diffuse sunlight hurt her, but she did her best to conceal her pain.
Instead, she watched the soldier as he stretched his back and stamped blood back into his legs after the drive. He reminded her of a restless stallion, loosed after being stabled for too long. His title—the Warrior of Man—fit him well.
He kept close to the woman, Erin Granger. He was clearly besotted with her, and even Rhun seemed more aware of the woman’s presence than Elizabeth liked.
Still, Elizabeth had to admit the historian had an athletic grace about her and a fine mind. In another time, another life, they might have been friends.
Nadia headed back toward the airplane. “If we’re to make our rendezvous, we must leave now.”
The group followed her up the stairs and into the aircraft.
Ducking inside, Elizabeth glanced to the left, to a small room with two tiny chairs, angled windows, and red and black switches and buttons.
“That’s called the cockpit,” Rhun explained. “The pilot flies the plane from in there.”
She saw the youngest of the Sanguinists, the one called Christian, taking a seat inside. It seemed the skills of the Sanguinists had adapted to this new age.
She turned her back and headed into the main space. Rich leather seats lined each side of the small airplane with a narrow aisle down the middle. She paid heed to the small windows, imagining how it would be to view the world from the air, the clouds from above, the stars from the sky.
This was indeed a time of wonders.
Her eyes strayed past the seats and settled on a long black box in back, with handles on the ends. The box was plainly of modern construction, but its shape had not changed since long before her time.
It was a coffin.
She stopped so suddenly that Rhun collided with her.
“Forgive me,” he said quietly.
Her eyes had not left the coffin. She sniffed. The box did not contain a corpse, or she would have smelled it.
Why is it here?
Then Nadia smiled — and Elizabeth immediately understood.
She lunged back, bumping hard into Rhun. With her left hand, she pulled Rhun’s hooked blade from its wrist sheath. In one quick motion, she swept it at Nadia. But her target danced back, the blade catching her on the chin, drawing blood.
But not nearly enough.
Elizabeth cursed the clumsiness of her left hand.
Behind her, a door slammed. She turned and saw that Christian had stuffed the two humans in the cockpit for safekeeping. She was flattered that he thought her such a threat.
She tightened her grip on the knife and faced Nadia.
The woman had slipped free a length of silver chain, readying it like a whip, and carried a short sword in the other.
“Stop!” Rhun yelled, his voice booming in the small space.
Elizabeth held her ground. She pictured the sarcophagus from which she was birthed into this new world. She remembered the bricked-up cell in her castle tower where she had slowly starved. She could not stand to be confined again, to be trapped.
“The last time you put me in a coffin,” she spat at Rhun, “I lost four hundred years.”
“It’s just for this trip,” Rhun promised her. “The plane will be traveling above the clouds. There will be no escaping the sun where we fly.”
Still, she panicked at the thought of being shut away again, unable to control herself. She thrashed against the silver that bound her to him. “I’d rather die.”
Nadia stepped closer. “If you prefer.”
With a quick flick of her short sword, the woman slashed Elizabeth’s throat. Silver burned her skin, and blood poured from the wound, trying to purge the holiness from her body. Elizabeth stopped fighting, the blade falling from her fingertips. Rhun was there, clamping his hand over her throat, holding in the blood.
“What have you done?” he hissed at Nadia.
“She’ll live,” Nadia said. “I cut shallow. It will make it easier to get her into the box without more needless fighting.”
Nadia lifted the hinged lid.
Elizabeth moaned, but crippled by silver, she had the strength to do nothing more.
Rhun lifted her and carried her to the coffin.
“I promise that I will fetch you from here,” he said. “Within hours.”
He lowered her into the coffin gently. A click and the manacle left her wrist.
She willed herself to sit up, to fight, but she could not summon the strength.
The lid came down on the box, smothering her again into darkness.
With the sun down for the past hour, Leopold haunted the edges of the papal summer residence. The grounds themselves were larger even than the entirety of Vatican City, offering plenty of places to skulk, hide, and watch. At the moment, he was up in one of the giant holm oaks that dotted the property, using its branches and thick trunk to keep hidden in the dark. The tree stood only a stone’s throw from the main castle.
Earlier, as the sun went down, he had crawled out of his hay bale. Using the darkness, it was easy to slip through the police barricade around the ruins of the train. His ears easily picked out the heartbeats of the salvage investigators, allowing him to avoid them and leave unseen. From the hay bale, he had heard the cardinal mention that he would be coming to Castel Gandolfo, where he would mourn and pray for the souls who had lost their lives this day.
So Leopold followed after sunset, rushing with the speed only a Sanguinist could muster, to cross the handful of miles to reach the small village with its looming papal castle.
For the past half hour, he had watched the residence from a distance, slowly circling it completely. He dared get no closer lest the Sanguinists inside sense his presence.
But with his keen ears, he heard much from inside, bits and pieces of conversation, the flow of gossip among the staff. He slowly learned what they knew of the tragic events. It seemed only Cardinal Bernard had escaped alive. The police had found the bodies of the train engineers. Leopold remembered hearing a helicopter come and go before the rescuers arrived on scene. The cardinal must have collected his dead. Bernard would not let the bodies of Sanguinists fall into the hands of the Italian police. Leopold even heard a maid mention a body, seen briefly by her, before Bernard whisked it out of sight into the bowels of the castle.
Leopold shifted on his branch and prayed for their murdered souls. He knew the deaths were necessary, to serve a greater purpose, but he mourned Erin and Jordan, and his fellow Sanguinists — Rhun, Nadia, and Christian. Even the irascible Father Ambrose had not deserved such a fate.
Now, he listened to the sounds of a funeral Mass, the cardinal’s rich Italian tones unmistakable even from such a distance. Leopold’s lips moved in prayer to match, attending that Mass himself from his perch in the tree. All the while, he listened for the voices of Erin and Jordan, in case the staff were wrong. He tried to pick their heartbeats out of the tapestry of the pope’s human retainers.
Nothing.
He heard only the cardinal’s prayers.
As the funeral Mass finished, he climbed down the tree and retreated out of the grounds and across to the neighboring town. He searched and found a discreet telephone booth beside a gas station. He dialed a number he had memorized.
The connection was answered immediately. “You survived?” the Damnatus said, sounding more angry than relieved. “Did anyone else?”
Of course, that would be the Damnatus’s main concern. He plainly worried that if Leopold had survived, then others might have, too, like the prophesied trio. Leopold did not expect an apology from him for being caught in that same trap — as much as he might believe he deserved one. Both knew their path was a righteous one. No matter Leopold’s feelings, he must work together with the Damnatus, even if the man had almost killed him to achieve that goal.
Knowing this, Leopold explained all he had learned. “From what I have been able to determine, only the cardinal survived. A maid spotted a body brought here from the wreckage. There may be more.”
“Return to the castle and check that body,” the Damnatus ordered. “Confirm the others are dead. Bring me proof.”
Leopold should have thought of that himself, but to enter the residence would put him at great risk of discovery. Still, he made the Damnatus a promise. “It will be done.”
Minutes later, Leopold found himself at the secret gate that led into the Sanguinists’ subterranean wing of the castle. He prayed that none guarded this door. Once there, he sliced the tender flesh of his palm and dripped a few precious drops of blood into the old stone cup. He whispered the necessary prayers, then slipped through the entrance as it opened.
He paused at the threshold and stretched out his senses: listening for heartbeats, smelling for the presence of others, straining to see into each dark corner.
Once satisfied that he was alone, Leopold worked his way toward the Sanguinist Chapel. Any of the bodies recovered from the explosion would have been brought down there. He remembered listening to the funeral.
Fearing others of his order might still be about, he slipped out his short blade and tightened his hand on it. He had killed many men and strigoi in his long life, but he had never killed another Sanguinist. He girded himself against that possibility.
He continued silently down the final tunnel, breathing in the familiar underground smells of damp earth, rat droppings, and a hint of incense from the recent Mass. As he neared the entrance to the chapel, his steps slowed.
Quiet prayers drifted to him, stopping him.
He recognized the lone mourner’s voice.
Cardinal Bernard.
Leopold crept to the closed door and peered through its tiny window. Beyond a row of pews, a white altar cloth covered a stone table, lit with beeswax candles at both ends. A golden chalice stood in the middle, brimming with wine.
The flickering firelight reflected off the stained-glass windows built into the stone walls to either side — and off an ebony coffin that rested before the altar.
He noted the simple silver cross affixed to the top.
It was a Sanguinist’s coffin.
He knew the body inside must soon be shipped to Rome and entombed in the Sanctuary below St. Peter’s, the one place on Earth secure enough to keep their secrets.
But one person was not yet ready to say good-bye.
Bernard knelt in front of the coffin, his white head bowed, murmuring prayers. He seemed somehow smaller, fallen from his high station as cardinal into profound and personal sorrow.
Confronted here by the physical proof of his deeds, grief cut through Leopold. A warrior of the Church lay dead, and it might as well have been by his hand. While such a death in service to the Church brought a Sanguinist his final peace, Leopold found no comfort from that thought.
Bernard’s scarlet vestments wrinkled as he leaned forward and placed a hand on the side of the coffin. “Farewell, my son.”
Leopold pictured his fellow Sanguinists aboard the train. From the cardinal’s final words of good-bye, it must be either Rhun or Christian in that coffin.
Bernard stood and left the chapel, his shoulders bowed with grief.
Leopold retreated to a side room, stacked full of wine casks. He waited until the sound of the cardinal’s footfalls had long since faded before returning to the empty chapel and entering.
He moved toward the coffin, his legs leaden with grief and guilt. He knew that the Damnatus would want it to be Rhun in that coffin, the prophesied Knight of Christ. The fate of the others could not be certain, but Leopold suspected there must not have been enough of their blasted remains to be carried here.
Reaching the coffin, he ran a palm across the cold smooth surface and whispered a prayer of atonement. Once done, he held his breath, lifted the lid, and looked inside, bracing himself.
It was empty.
Shocked, Leopold searched the chapel, looking for a trap, but found none.
Returning his attention to the coffin, he saw it was not entirely empty.
A single rosary lay curled with great care on the bottom, the beads well worn, the small silver cross dull from the decades of a thumb rubbing it in prayer. He pictured Bernard recovering this rosary from the cold mud of the winter fields, all that was left of the Sanguinist who had once carried it.
Leopold did not have to touch it to know to whom it belonged.
It was as familiar as his own palm.
It was his rosary, lost when he fell from the train.
He closed his eyes.
Look how far I have fallen, my Lord…
He remembered Bernard so bowed by sorrow, so stricken by grief.
Over me… a traitor.
He closed the lid and stumbled out of the chapel, out of the castle.
Only then did he weep.